Farmtopia: the project that brings digital agriculture to small farms

Democratising agricultural innovation for a more sustainable future. Farmtopia is a European project funded by Horizon Europe to foster the adoption of digital technologies in small and medium-sized farms. With 18 pilot projects, it aims to develop solutions for crops and livestock that are poorly supported by current technology.

Digital technologies have become widely adopted in agriculture due to their numerous advantages, ranging from more efficient resource use to increased transparency along the agri-food supply chain and access to new income sources. However, the adoption of these technologies remains limited among small and medium-sized European farms due to multiple factors. Most existing technologies are not well suited to small and fragmented fields or provide information at a level of detail that often does not meet farmers’ actual needs. Moreover, ensuring the affordability of such technologies is crucial to fostering widespread use, as their adoption is often hindered by high initial investment costs, a lack of tailored financing options, and the additional expenses required for training and implementation.

In this context, the European project Farmtopia, funded by the Horizon Europe research and innovation program, aims to democratize digital agriculture by promoting the development and adoption of solutions specifically designed for small and medium-sized farms. To this purpose, the project comprises a number of innovation pilots targeting specific crops and livestock for which existing technologies are inadequate or underdeveloped. Examples of agricultural systems include avocado production in Greece, mushroom cultivation in Hungary, or dairy sheep and goat farming in the Netherlands. The total number of pilot projects involved is 18, with 9 pilots engaged from the very beginning and other 9 pilots to be recruited through an open call.

Launched in September 2023, the project is now at its midpoint, and the 22 partners have recently gathered in Milan for the mid-term project meeting. The assembly was held on March 19 and 20 at the premises of the Department of Management Economics and Industrial Engineering (DIG), which is one of the partners of the consortium. The objective of this meeting was to assess the progress made during the first half of the project, ensure alignment with planned objectives, and refine actions for the next phase. Moreover, it was announced during the meeting that 124 applications for the selection of the 9 additional pilot projects were received through the open call, indicating a strong interest in the project across European countries.

The DIG research team contributing to the Farmtopia project is composed of researchers from the Food Sustainability Lab and the Smart Agrifood Observatory. Altogether, the team is responsible for co-designing sustainable and collaborative business models to enhance the adoption of agricultural digital solutions among small farmers. Leveraging on interviews, workshops, and structured questionnaires, the team has identified a set of interventions and business model patterns to address the behavioral, technological, and financial challenges hindering the adoption of agricultural digital solutions by small farmers. These patterns were identified working in close collaboration with the initial set of pilots and will be further refined and applied to the new set of pilots joining the project in the last year of implementation.

The Farmtopia project also contributes to the HumanTech Research Line 2. More details can be found at this link: https://farmtopia.eu/.