AgriExcel

Agrifood system in EU faces continuous crises of sustainability and competitiveness. Greater resilience and ability to respond to disturbances are needed to ensure the competitiveness and viability of the agrifood system – policy makers must recognize this need and adjust the strategies for policy implementation accordingly. The resilience of agrifood industry need digitalization and adoption of emerging technologies (i.e., 4th industrial revolution).

Adoption of smart agritech to support data-based decision making and knowledge management in agrifood system is a key to increasing ability to respond to disturbances; to grow competitiveness of the operations and to adopt new sustainable business models in the industry. Despite their proven potential to boost agricultural productivity by reducing costs and enabling growth with fewer resources (McKinsey 2023), the development and implementation of these technologies have been slower than anticipated due to e.g. lower innovation capacity and cross-sectoral connections (i.e., between the ICT and agrifood sectors) of rural regions.

AgriExcel project is helping to accelerate the agritech evolution in the EU agrifood system. AgriExcel is building capacity on the practical application of digital solutions for greater resilience, sustainability, viability, and competitiveness of the EU agrifood system. The policy learning is supported by identification and analysis of the good practices as well as via regionally implemented innovation camps. Innovation camp is a regional stakeholder group platform that enables mission-oriented innovation dialogue for planning regional digitisation projects. Inter-regional learning is enabled as a part of the expertise and good practise exchange connected to the innovation camps.

Policy actions and learning targets include:

1) application of mission-oriented innovation approach to steering digitisation
2) application of digital solutions in agrifood system