‘It is important to approach open data and open technologies with an open mindset. Citizen- and farmer-generated data can lead to major breakthrough in policy making, providing insights and evidence for better informed environmental management and nature conservation. In the context of climate adaptation and mitigation, open data can also become a powerful tool in the hands of communities of practice, advocacy groups and small companies which can use it to generate solutions that address problems at regional, national and global level.’

These were the summary remarks of Pavlos Georgiadis, ethnobotanist, social entrepreneur and participant of the CAPSELLA, Harvesting Innovation event in Milan in May. Part of Milan Food Week, the event was hosted in collaboration with OPERA, the Italian Observatory for Agroecology. The guiding question was: how can ICT and open data innovations be used to further agroecological and agrobiodiverse farming practices?

The meeting was a culmination of the Horizon 2020-funded CAPSELLA project, the Collective Awareness PlatformS for Environmentally-sound Land management based on data technoLogies and Agrobiodiversity. This project emphasises communities of practice and bringing together diverse food system actors from tech and open data specialists, to scientists, farmers and academics. Under the principles of co-design and open innovation, the project experiments with the different ways technology can be used to further sustainable food systems.

ARC2020 has been tracking this project from the start, with Oliver Moore presenting at the CAPSELLA launch, two years ago. Helene Schulze went along to the closing event to think-through and present on the ways that innovation and open data for agroecology may be incorporated in policy-making.

CAPSELLA – linking agroecology and technology?

Concepts of social digital innovation, co-design and co-innovation, emphasise the significance of how ICT innovations are designed, how a need is identified, who is involved in the design and innovation process and who has access to the final product(s).

This is the key potential opportunity and potential obstacle for AgTech innovations aligning with or furthering agroecology. How can we ensure that this technology (such as data from satellite imaging) does not fall into the hands of the existing power concentrations within the global food system, Big Ag? Instead, how can technology empower small producers? The CAPSELLA project emphasises that this technology must be designed and built with the active participation of those for whom it is intended.

Policy promoting AgTech

With a range of researchers in agroecology, farmers representatives and innovation, ICT and policy experts, I was asked what policies are needed for data to drive innovation in sustainable agriculture and food systems.

I first addressed the need for nuance – when we talk about AgTech, we are talking about a large swathe of different innovations and interventions. These range from using drones to measure CAP compliance to grassroots open-source technology movements to large agribusineses collecting and purchasing satellite data. Accordingly, when faced with the question of what policies encourage innovation, we must think about the kind of innovation we want to see. What innovations enhance and further agroecology? How can those innovations be supported?

These questions were asked at the start of the day and the answers seemed clear: community-driven, bottom-up and accessible innovations. Innovations designed and built with the eventual user. An important part of agroecology is about decision-making capabilities, questioning and problematising the power dynamics embedded in the existing food system. This is why, when we talk about innovation, this term should refer not only the technological innovation but innovation in the decision-making structures, innovation in the way we make policy.

We need more participatory policy making where all sorts of actors and stakeholders are folded into all stages of the process, right from the very beginning in formulating the questions of concern. A purely top-down decision making approach is not agroecologically aligned, will likely lead to a situation where AgTech and digitisation reinforces existing vertically inclined or hierarchical decision making structures. Such structures may allow for increased corporate consolidation of the food system, or at least do not pave the way for a more equal food system.

Access to best practice

In what ways could AgTech counter such power dynamics? One solution is improved knowledge dissemination. In the words of participant and speaker Dr Andrea Beste,

‘Organic farming and agroecological farming systems depend on knowledge. We have so much knowledge spread around the world but it is fragmented. If you can put this knowledge together on the internet or on a platform where you can change or share something, then this knowledge will spread very fast around the world.’

The internet is a space which facilitates easy, fast and affordable access to knowledge such as best farming practice.

An example of how CAPSELLA proposes that AgTech might help knowledge dissemination is the SOILapp. This builds upon a very old soil quality measure, the spade test. Here the farmer digs up the top 30cm of soil with a spade. The app will then ask a series of questions to help the farmer understand the quality of the soil, these include soil moisture and texture as well as vegetation coverage. The data is then uploaded onto a map allowing the user to track changes in their own soil quality as well as compare with soil quality in other areas.

Open-data and open mindsets

The open-data mindset as used in the CAPSELLA apps requires a reframing in the way we think about knowledge. It requires a shift from a system based on competition to one encouraging cooperation. What might a food system look like where skill-sharing, knowledge dissemination and collective learning empowers individuals and communities rather than placing them at a too-risky competitive disadvantage?

The open-data mindset was framed as a response to the question of how to scale up agroecology. Professor Yiannis Ioannidis from the ATHENA Research and Innovation Center, argues that

‘By coming up with connections among the communities and people involved, helping them to communicate best practices and reuse data from a different environment and in general raising awareness… Openess and connectedness is key and technology is a perfect tool to be able to achieve this.’

There is a long way to go to reshuffle power dynamics in the food system. Bottom-up, community-driven AgTech innovations are small ways powerful actors can be challenged nonetheless. Through access to data and knowledge such technologies may facilitate, in the long-term, a food and farming culture more oriented toward cooperation, collaborative learning and the collective good.

CAPSELLA – participatory science and open data for field, seed & food

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Somewhere between convenience, efficiency, cost saving and a comprehensive EU surveillance mega state, the use of drones and other in-the-sky technologies for ensuring CAP compliance represents, as it were, a Brave New World. 

Helene Schulze: Imagine annual farm audits performed not by EU regulators pacing the fields and talking through the details with farmers but by gently buzzing machines flying overhead, measuring, photographing, assessing compliance to CAP rules and regulations. Whether this image inspires excitement or apprehension has divided opinion in Europe. How have AgTech tools like satellite mapping, remote sensing and drones been implemented in measuring CAP compliance? What are the concerns?

The EU spends almost half of its annual budget on agricultural subsidies, around €59 billion a year.These subsidies are allocated on a two-pillar basis; the first, a basic payment per hectare of agricultural land and the second funds based on voluntary agri-environmental service provision. A form of compensation for farmers, they encourage the maintenance of hedge rows, buffer strips and meadows, the limitation of fertiliser use and adherence to crop rotation plans, for example.

With such vast spending comes the necessity to ensure taxpayer funds are allocated fairly and accurately. High-tech data collection devices such as satellite mapping and drones are a way of doing this. Ray Purdy, Senior Research Fellow in environmental law at the University of Oxford, told me ‘almost all EU countries now use satellite technology, which can produce accurate maps of the size of agricultural parcels (ensuring farmers are only claiming subsidies for genuine farmland), and to check if claimants are complying with certain environmental conditions attached to subsidies.’

Since 1988, the Monitoring of Agriculture and Remote Sensing (MARS) programme has used satellite mapping to measure CAP compliance. Adherence assessment is the responsibility of each member state which must establish a paying agency to perform checks and audits. EU law stipulates that each year at least 5% of all farms must be audited.

In 2012, around 70% of these required inspections performed by satellites, Purdy notes. Primarily, this is a money-saving strategy: satellites are able to cover vast swathes of land in little time. Satellite monitoring a farm costs around a third the price of sending a regulator.

Additionally, Purdy said when queried, ‘they can make farmers happier, if they provide a level playing field i.e. if they know there is less chance of others breaking the law, they don’t have to because they’re not being put in a disadvantageous competitive position.’

As mentioned in a previous Arc2020 article, AgTech hardware is being employed by many farmers across the continent as part of their own farm management strategies. The European Commission supports these efforts, arguing that ‘technological development and digitisation make possible big leaps in resource efficiency enhancing an environment and climate smart agriculture, which reduce the environment-/climate impact of farming, increase resilience and soil health and decrease costs for farmers.’

A question submitted by NABU representative at recent Agriculture and Food Summit, 30th November Paris. Interestingly, Tobias Menne global head of digital farming at Bayer, who was on the panel on digital farming at the time, thought this would be a very bad idea, in terms of farmer trust. Photo (c) Oliver Moore

However, farms that tend to incorporate such AgTech tools currently are large agri-businesses. I asked Chris Henderson from NGO Practical Action about this scale and affordability issue: ‘new hardware such as drones and robots are unlikely to be within the financial reach of smallholders…they are more likely to find application in high-potential commercial areas with better off farmers. One thing that needs careful consideration at the macro level is the negative effects intensive agriculture (driven by new technologies) might have on the poor – perhaps displacing them from their land or out-competing with them for water.’

Image: Gavin Whitner (CC BY 2.0) http://musicoomph.com/

This points to a divergence in access and response to AgTech. Perhaps, if farmers are not employing drones, robots and satellite imagery on their own land, they may appear more critical of auditing bodies doing the same.  Since member states are responsible for their own compliance assessments, there has been some variance in the types of technologies and strategies of inspection, as well as responses to these across the continent. A 2008 study by Ray Purdy found that a third of farmers were opposed to satellite monitoring in the UK, where it has been used to combat subsidy fraud for over a decade. In his interviews with farmers Purdy found that many ‘made reference to ‘1984’ and ‘Big Brother’ and were concerned that the satellite would be ‘peeping’ or ‘spying’ on them.’

These are natural concerns. For one, with a human inspector one at least knows when the assessment is taking place whereas satellite monitoring gives no such indication. Farmers are unaware when they are undergoing an inspection. There are also questions to be raised about who has access to the collected data. This is powerful information, information which could give some farmers a competitive advantage. With the potential implementation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in CAP compliance testing, these concerns are heightened further. Drones can get a lot closer to the target, taking sharper photographs. Farms are also homes on private land and such inspection could be very intrusive. Whilst UAVs are being explored in the agricultural context and there are pilot projects across Europe, they have yet to be included in CAP monitoring.

When queried, Vicki Hird, food and farming policy coordinator at Sustain, argued that ‘there’s certainly a lot of potential here both in measuring compliance but also from the perspective of the farmers and workers as part of a sustainable farming strategy to assess needs and review progress on land. It can help bring the whole farming community into understanding about how nature and farming should work together on a whole farm basis.’ So, AgTech tools must be incorporated into other governance and management strategies which bring people together rather than alienate them which would risk farmers feeling observed from a distant, invisible body reading to subject penalties.

Purdy reiterates this call for the maintenance of human interaction in farm auditing; ‘if a machine is doing the monitoring it provides less contact between the farmer and the regulator, which might also be an opportunity to discuss other farming issues. Sometimes human contact can be important.’

Irrespective of these fears, CAP auditing will likely become only more technology-dominated in the years to come. Key is to consider in which frameworks such technology can be used to support farmers and prevent feelings of alienation and constant surveillance. Theoretically if collected data were made publicly available, small farmers could begin to benefit from AgTech developments currently too expensive for their own use. Through open-source initiatives, they could have access to information about their land currently only accessible to wealthy agri-businesses. It is also possible to collectively own and manage technologies, as the extensive CUMA machinery co-ops in France show. Again, for this to work these developments must be thought through thoroughly in consultation with farmers. Moreover, the delivery of any such tech should involve farmers – not so much as inspected from the sky, but, rather, as participants in the process of verifying their own management techniques.

It is also interesting to explore how these technologies might impact the relationships between companies, environmental NGOs, regulators and farmers: if Bayer sound more farmer-concerned than NABU, as the example from the politico event referenced in the image above suggests, we are in strange territory. And if farmers are ignored it is unlikely that such auditing technologies will receive widespread support in a climate of concern over an increasingly intrusive surveillance state.

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Automation and digitisation are rising in farming and the broader agri-food sector. Germany – industrial powerhouse of Europe –  seems an obvious place to embrace AGTech. From precision farming and data ownership to embodied energy and cost, what are the opportunities, the impacts and the implications? And how are agroecologists responding?

Helene Schulze: When the body is ready, the text is sent. Cows equipped with vaginal thermometers are now alerting farmers by text when they are in heat. So far, 5000 German farms have signed up to this Connected Cow system, as developed by Medira Technologies and Deutsche Telekom. And there are others similar systems emerging too, as the Internet of Things beds in.

There are ever more vocal fears that automation will put the labour forces of entire industries under threat. Increasingly robots, drones and machines are taking on jobs previously done by humans. Frequently they do them better and agriculture is no exception.

The idealised image of the small German farmer, ploughing away endlessly in the fields is outdated, as Ralf Hombach, business analytics expert at PwC explains:

‘increasingly the famer adopts a supervisory and controlling role.’

The PwC study (German) showed that of the cross-section of 100 farms analysed, 54% had already invested in digital technologies. 40% planned to either continue investing or begin investing in such technologies in future.

Drone spraying sugar cane. Photo by Herney

What is agricultural technology or AgTech? Where should we be worried? What can we expect in the years to come?

Ever since tractors were first fitted with GPS (or global-positioning-systems) at the start of the 21^stcentury, one can observe the boom of the agricultural technology, or AgTech, sector. Frequently it is heralded as the third wave of agricultural modernisation, after mechanisation from 1900-1930s and the growth and development of agrarian genetics during the Green Revolution, 1930s-1960s.

AgTech incorporates a range of technological and scientific developments to be used in farming. This includes ‘smart farming,’ i.e. hardware such as drones and robots but also software such as sensors, image recognition or machine-to-machine communication. Smart farming incorporates a whole swathe of different tools and functions from milking machines to satellite-driven soil and crop assessment.

Farm worker Derek Search powers an ATV across fields at Forage Systems Research Center. The ATV is equipped with sonar reading sensors that measure pasture growth. The data is ran through a computer that allows producers to manage nutrient applications. photo by Kyle Spradley CC BY-NC 2.0

The underlying intention is to increase the quality, quantity and efficiency of agricultural production through implementation of these various technologies; applying fertiliser where fertiliser is needed, milking the cow when she so requires. The idea is that this encourages the better allocation of resources such as pesticides only to those parts of the field that require it. It can save time for farmers, theoretically encourage pro-environmental farming strategies and produce a lot of food. So can AgTech innovations be a way of feeding the world – sustainably?

During the Seventh Framework Programme and now as part of Horizon2020, a research and innovation programme, the EU has sponsored a variety of AgTech projects. One example is the rollout of Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) technology. Primarily these are sensors used for monitoring the health and wellbeing of animals. Collected data includes GPS location, body temperature and activity. As outlined at the start, Medira Technologies and Deutsche Telekom collaborated to produce Connected Cow. Here a cow is equipped with a vaginal thermometer which alerts the farmer by text message when the cow is in heat. So far, this has proven popular among the 5,000 farms initially equipped with this technology. It could well be incorporated in efforts to ensure better animal welfare in livestock rearing, as is under debate in Germany.

The fears that AgTech will eliminate the agricultural workforce have not yet actualised in Germany. A recent study (German) by search engine Joblift analysed job offers in the German agriculture sector over the past two years. It found that the past year brought consistent growth for the agricultural job market. 4% of jobs fell into the AgTech category and, despite automation, there were 20% more jobs in this sector than in the year previous. The AgTech branch is growing four times as fast as the rest of the sector.

1/3 of the jobs listed are from companies with over 1,000 employees and, due to the initial cost of AgTech, it is a sector spearheaded by big agribusinesses. The agricultural sector has very low margins and so necessarily hefty investments in innovation are difficult for small farmers. That said, the farm hack movement has seen citizen farmers taking the initiative in a myriad of open and affordable ways – some examples are below.

Photo (c)   Kyle Spradley CC BY-NC 2.0 Brent Myers and Bill Schlep plant corn for variety testing at the Bradford Research Center. They have utilized GPS mapping systems and computers to know where certain seeds are plotted in the field.

However, for some companies AgTech is financially lucrative terrain. Globally, the market was worth E3.2 Billion in 2016, according to AGfunder, a Californian based crowfunding platform. 363 million of this was spent on farm management and sensor technology, the Financial times reported last month.

Die Zeit newspaper reports Bosch has already made a billion Euro turnover in selling smart farming technologies. With this sector projected to continue growing, the company hopes to double this turnover in the next ten years. Other large agribusinesses are doing the same. Bayer has teamed up with the Institute of Geography and Information Studies at Hamburg University to work on the development of new field analysis tools. They have also partially taken over Proplant which had produced a milk cow assessment app. Bayer says it is working on ‘further strategic investments’ using satellite, drone and sensor-gathered data in the coming years.

Predictions of the future of smart farming see the increasing collection of big data to drive real-time decision-making on harvesting, planting and yields, for example. Since this field is still dominated by agribusinesses, there is growing concern about how this data is collected, what it is used for and who has access to it. Fears concern a monopoly of valuable information in the hands of the already powerful global agribusiness firms, data which could be used to differently charge farmers for the same product, for example.

However, with the rise of open source data initiatives across the world there is the chance, if strategically thought out soon, for collaborative, open systems where all stakeholders have access to huge data stores. This has the potential to democratise the supply chain network, redistributing power from the information-rich agribusiness firms and giving greater negotiating ability to smaller farms, new entrants or start-ups. This requires work on generating the institutional and regulatory infrastructures to ensure accessibility and affordability in data creation and sharing.

While there are a number of threats to farming and farmers in Germany, German farmers are not yet being eliminated from the labour force by robots. And we can likely expect exciting developments in AgTech in the coming years. This technology may have positive socio-economic and environmental effects, working against inequalities in the current food system and minimising the environmental impact of the sector. However, this requires forward planning to ensure frameworks are in place which allow accessibility to AgTech and its use for social good.

Helene Schulze has just completed an MSc Nature, Society and Environmental Governance from Oxford University. Her dissertation focused on seed saving. She helped organise the 2017 Oxford Food Forum. She has also interned for Sustain: Alliance for Better Food and Farming.

Cross-posted from ARC2020. LEad image by Sanint.

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