Increasing the resilience of agriculture in water and nutrient-scarce environments through digital innovations

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes: farmers have increased access to digital tools and advice to improve their resilience to water and nutrient scarcity; farmers are better prepared for the Green Transition and EU’s new plan for sustainable prosperity and competitiveness; biodiversity benefits from decreasing water, air and soil pollution while European dependency on mineral fertilisers is reduced. Scope: A key challenge for the agricultural sector is to provide food in a context of increasing global population, climate change and price volatility while reducing pollution and preserving natural resources and biodiversity for future generations. Farmers should be able to adopt innovative solutions to increase the resilience to water and to nutrient scarcity. Digital and data technologies offer solutions to monitor parameters (e.g. soil conditions, water and air quality, nutrients content and availability) in a cost-efficient manner while supporting decision-making on input management, adapt to climate change, contribute to cleaner air and biodiversity. Proposals should: improve knowledge on the complex interactions between plant, soil, water, air and nutrients (Nitrogen, Phosphorus) in view of climate change in the EU and its impacts on crop production, farming systems (including crop protection use) and the environment, in a representative number of different pedoclimatic regions; develop and test monitoring devices and systems that can take into account the findings on the interactions described in the previous point, considering their easy integration into other farm management information systems (FMIS) or decision support systems (DSS), and the affordability and accessibility to farmers (such as low connectivity in certain rural areas, digital knowledge, health impairments/disability, etc.); develop and test AI-enabled decision support systems to better monitor and assess the effects of agricultural practices and land management measures in terms of water and nutrient use taking into account different pedoclimatic zones, local conditions and farm characteristics, their impact on pollution (water, soil) and benefits for biodiversity; create sets of high-quality AI training data to support the development of DSS with the objective to improve water and nutrient resilience of different farming systems, and make them publicly available, considering legal clarity, sustainable access, transparent documentation and metadata, harmonised and standardised protocols; identify potential barriers …