Objectives

PATH2DEA’s general objective is to achieve that digitalization may act as an enabler of agroecology.

PATH2DEA’s strategic objective is to feed into the evolving EU agroecology innovation ecosystem and help unlock digitalisation’s catalysing potential. 

O1: Create linkages and ease knowledge gain and exchange between stakeholders in digital agroecological farming systems and facilitate their access to the R&I ecosystem within Horizon Europe and beyond.

O2: Provide for improved coherence of digital solutions created by industry with actual needs by users.

O3: Provide proven evidence of tool performance in the digital agroecology context based on increasing reallife testing under various geographic and pedo-climatic conditions, for different crops and farming systems.

O4: Co-design of a European agroecology innovation ecosystem that is empowered by incorporating a strong concept of digital agroecology transformation.

O5: Facilitate for farmers and other users the access to digital tools and technologies for use in agroecological farming, and provide decision support for choosing best suited solutions.

O6: Contribute to a highly integrated and adaptive R&I programming process for fostering agroecology transition within the EU agroecology innovation ecosystem and beyond.

PATH2DEA will build a bridge connecting across EU initiatives and platforms in both agroecology and digital technology (such as AEEU or EDIHs).

Activities

PATH2DEA aims at tailoring digital technologies to users’ needs and fostering wide-range adoption of digital agroecological farming in the EU and associated countries. It strategically engages with multiple actors, including early adopters of digital agroecological farming represented by six showcase farms. These farms represent different smallholder farming systems in various pedo-climatic regions. In RP1, showcase farms have been successfully set up and surveys and local workshops have been organised to assess usability aspects of digitalisation in agroecology.

Close interaction with farming communities and their hands-on experience is seen as essential for solid consensus validation of the project’s conclusions. Also, based on real-life testing, PATH2DEA is able to provide proven evidence of digital tool performance in an agroecology context. In PR1, an indicator framework featuring a synthesis of key criteria associated to the 13 principles of agroecology has been built, which is the basis for subsequent sustainability assessments of digital tools and technologies. Activities accomplished in RP1 include a joint visioning process, which integrated concepts created based on project results (surveys, analyses, workshops) and relevant external input. Together with other participatory approaches, this will flow into a co-creation methodology that is going to be implemented in an EU-wide co-creation workshop in RP2.

PATH2DEA’s accomplishments are being integrated in a strong agroecology innovation ecosystem. The project will build an Open Repository (OR) of digital tools and technologies for the use in agroecology that will be equipped with decision support functionalities, enabling it to truly catalyse farming systems’ transition to increased sustainability. In RP1, information collected from the different WPs was instrumental in designing an initial OR infrastructure, fulfilling pre-established requirements and feeding on the project’s VRE. It is planned that the OR is being implemented during the first part of RP2. 

Building on its collective project results linked to above activities, PATH2DEA aims to create an R & I roadmap on digital technologies in support of agroecology in the EU and associated countries. Roadmap creation is a process that will start in RP2, with the aim of guiding digital agroecology transition.