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LIFE AgRemSO3il at the 6th IDIES congress

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Students from IES Juan Carlos I (Murcia) presented the communication “Application of ozonation technique for the removal of thiamethoxam residues in farm soils” in the 6th edition of IDIES congress, held at Auditorio Víctor Villegas (Murcia) on 25thJune. The work was tutored by J. Fenoll (LIFE-AgRemSO3il, IMIDA), M. Aliste (IMIDA) and A.A. Sánchez (IES Juan Carlos I).

IDIES is an educational project of initiation to research focuses in secondary school students. The main objective is that students learn what is research and how must be performed, collaborating with researchers of different institutions. After a training period, students will disseminate their results (via oral and poster communication) in IDIES congress. At the moment it participates 10 secondary schools (from Mazarrón, Murcia, Alcantarilla, San Javier, Molina de Segura, Archena and Lorca) and 5 institutions: 2 research centers (CEBAS-CSIS, IMIDA) and 3 universities (UMU-Murcia, UPCT-Cartagena and UMH-Elche).

LIFE AgRemSO3il at the 3rd International Congress of Chemical Engineering

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LIFE AgRemSO3il participated in the 3rd International Congress of Chemical Engineering, ICCE3, held in Santander, Spain, between 19th and 21th June.

Researchers from IMIDA presented the work entitled “Removal of eight triazole and amide pesticides in soil by intermittent ozonation”.

The presentation covers degradation of residues of eight pesticides (difenoconazole, myclobutanil, tebuconazole, triadimenol, cyflufenamid, flonicamid, napropamide and propyzamide) in two different clay-loam soils applying intermittent ozonation treatment during 6 days.


Czech agriculture goes digital as science meets with farmers

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Close collaboration between scientists, researchers and farmers has helped agriculture in the Czech Republic to take significant digital steps and increase its competitiveness, analysts told EURACTIV Czech Republic.

An increasing number of Czech farmers have embraced the idea of “producing more with less input” through the application of technology-based precision farming practices.

There are already about 250 milking robots in the Czech Republic. There are also automatic floor cleaners in cowsheds, which suck up the slurry and remove it. This progress is also visible in the Czech fields, with tractors connected to the Internet.

“Czech farmers are the world leaders in using these technologies. Approximately three-quarters of Czech farmers use some of the precision farming systems,” Veronika Hlaváčková, director of the Institute for Agriculture Education, said.

Precise equals ecological?

Analysts suggest that modern technologies will inevitably prevail in the agriculture sector and have a multidimensional role to play in reducing the use of pesticides and bureaucracy for audit authorities.

“We can dramatically reduce inputs thanks to robotization, especially the consumption of pesticides and water,” Vojtěch Kotecký, an environment protection expert, said, adding that robots apply much fewer herbicides and more accurately compared to conventional spraying.

“Although the Czech herbicide consumption fell by 19% between 2009 and 2016, robotics could bring result in even more dramatic drop,” Kotecký said.

The digitisation of the EU farming sector has become a priority for EU policymakers. The European Commission recently submitted to the EU member states a draft declaration titled “A smart and sustainable digital future for European agriculture and rural areas”.

According to the document, EU member states recognise the “urgency” to speed up the introduction of new technologies in order to address increasing challenges related to the environment, economy and society.

Scientists and farmers

The digital revolution in agriculture would never have been possible without research, development and its subsequent implementation. However, linking scientists and farmers is not an easy task.

“So far, the connection between the research sphere and agricultural practice has not been ensured. A number of research projects concerned areas that have not been very useful in practice or on the contrary farmers have been unable to get to useful research results,” Hlaváčková explained.

Almost three years ago, a Technology Platform for Agriculture was established in the Czech Republic, and Veronika Hlaváčková has been the main coordinator.

Thanks to the cooperation and direct communication between farmers and scientists, Czech agriculture is gradually being modernised and refined, she said.

“Over decades, Czech researchers in collaboration with major agricultural machinery manufacturers and Czech farmers have been the creators of many solutions such as sensors, soil probes and work algorithms that help to maintain or improve soil quality. And not just in the Czech Republic,” Hlaváčková said.

Modern technology in agriculture does not only mean the replacement of forks with robots and drones. New ways of growing plants are also being explored so that a crop grows while costs decrease.

The new technology is being tested first with pilot companies, so-called demo-farms, before engaging in the normal agricultural activity. One of them is Bureš Farm where the cultivation of supporting crops is tested.

“A total of 100 hectares of winter wheat are sown on demofarm and surrounding farms with a slug as an auxiliary crop. The stands are being closely monitored and the data are used to verify the research outputs,” said Jindřich Šmöger.

“In agriculture, the result is not visible from one day to another; it is a long-distance run. It is necessary to introduce new technologies in practice, first on smaller areas, then on larger and then of course in different conditions,” Šmöger added.

The potential

Miloslav Klas, the Director of the Agricultural Society Chrášťany, said there was great demand for precision agriculture.

“It is a dynamically developing field where many research teams, both foreign and domestic, operate. Precise farming methods and procedures begin to standardise and are finally prepared in such a way that they can be used effectively for their benefit by a large part of farms in the Czech Republic,” Klas said.

According to him, the development of precision agriculture is also boosted by the fact that most Czech agricultural holdings are led by university level experts.

“There is a new technological stage of agricultural production development ahead of us. It will bring many new opportunities, which would have been difficult to achieve before,” Klas concluded.

[Edited by Sarantis Michalopoulos, Sam Morgan]

 

Source: https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/czech-agriculture-goes-digital-as-science-meets-with-farmers/

Digitalising agriculture: Opportunities and market control

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By Florence Schulz | EURACTIV.de | translated by Daniel Eck

This article is part of our special report Innovation in post-2020 Common Agricultural Policy.

With the EU’s new Common Agricultural Policy, the European Commission is set to foster innovation and digitalisation in agriculture. German companies are hoping for multi-billion euro deals, yet management and infrastructural issues stand in the way. EURACTIV Germany reports.

“Today’s harvesters are mobile laboratories. With a GPS, it can be controlled with great precision and simultaneously collect a large amount of data on plants and soil.” Wolfram Eberhardt, head of corporate communications at Germany’s large agricultural machinery manufacturer Claas, explained.

Agriculture is experiencing a profound change. Robot-controlled milking systems or aerial drones that examine plants and possible pest infestations have long gained a foothold on the agricultural market.

High hopes lie in digitalisation. It should help Europe maintain its position in the increasingly globalised agricultural market, make the latter more sustainable and help cover the growing global need for food.

While negotiations on the new CAP continue, the Commission published a statement on a smart and sustainable digital future of the CAP, in which it calls on member states to urgently take more measures in relation to digitalisation.

Who controls the market?

For the agricultural engineering sector, this means billion-euro contracts. The sector foresees growth of up to 12%. In Germany alone, one of the leading powers on Europe’s market, 183 companies generated a turnover of more than seven billion euros in 2017 according to the auditing company EY.

The Association of German Engineers (VDI) estimated that close to one-third of this growth can be attributed to electronics, software and sensor technologies.

“The priority no longer lies in optimising machines and increasing their drive power. At Claas, we are more interested in looking for possibilities to make processes connected and intelligent,” said Eberhardt.

Machines of the future will communicate better between themselves. Processes will also be connected better, for instance with the help of a farm management software. All processes and machines, such as the milking systems, tractors, bookkeeping or the application of fertilisers, should therefore be collected. “This saves the farmer a significant amount of documentation work,” according to Eberhard.

Critics are quite sceptical about this trend. The rise of huge amounts of data could allow big companies such as Claas to build an invulnerable market position, they warn. Manufacturers of agricultural machinery could control the whole value-added chain, including the seed, pesticide and fertiliser market, if they extract data from the work of farmers on a huge scale.

This kind of criticism is not appropriate, according to Eberhard. “We only collect the data on a huge scale. As soon as the personal data of farmers is at stake, there is a need for the farmer’s explicit consent.”

Network expansion hampers progress

It cannot be said that digitalisation is being applied on every German farm. This is clear from a 2016 survey led by the digital association Bitkom. Only 12% of farmers stated that they possessed a farm management system. At the same time, more than half of the farmers use digital solutions, according to the study.

Hubertus Paetow, president of the DLG and a farmer himself in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, is quite sceptical on the matter: “There are also automation systems, as simple as steering that are taken into account. Truly innovative and digital solutions are only being used by a small fraction of farmers.”

And there are other difficulties too: “Without the appropriate infrastructure, farmers cannot implement new technologies at a large scale even if they wanted to,” Dr Josef Efken from the Thünen-Institut told A EURACTIV-led conference a few months ago. “Ultimately, it hampers the competitiveness of our agricultural sector.”

A lack of ideas, not of money

Alongside infrastructure, structural obstacles need to be overcome. Agricultural policy is a state matter in Germany. This means that subsidy requests are submitted differently to every ministry.

“In principle, our developers need to develop a different solution for farm management in every single federal state. The standardisation of data traffic is absolutely necessary,” according to Wolfram Eberhard.

Paetow of the DLG shares that opinion. German federalism is hindering Germany from taking a leading position on the international market of agricultural technology. The administrative expense of the CAP also needs to be reduced to a “bearable level”, according to Paetow.

For this, Wolfram Eberhard could imagine a European solution in which member states would all have access to the same platform. But such a project is not envisaged in the current draft of the CAP.

On the contrary, the system is intended to be more open and give member states more freedom in the development of their national agricultural strategies. It is therefore up to them to decide how to make use of the budget for agricultural research, which has increased to €10 billion.

The German ministry of agriculture appears quite ambitious in paving the way for a digital future. In the next three years, €60 million are set to go into the so-called “testing grounds”, which should test the practical relevance of new and digital technologies in the fields.

Hubertus Paetow welcomes the initiative. Up until now, the focus has always been on basic research. “Exceptionally, for once, there is no lack of money. For this, we urgently need more intelligent minds that have good and structured ideas to apply these financial means that have been made available.”

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

 

Source: https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/digitalising-agriculture-opportunities-and-market-control/

Responsible innovation key to smart farming

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The so-called ‘fourth agricultural revolution’ must provide social benefits and address potentially negative side-effects of agri-tech

— by University of East Anglia, UK

Responsible innovation that considers the wider impacts on society is key to smart farming, according to academics at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Agriculture is undergoing a technology revolution supported by policy-makers around the world. While smart technologies will play an important role in achieving improved productivity and greater eco-efficiency, critics have suggested that consideration of the social impacts is being side-lined.

In a new journal article Dr David Rose and Dr Jason Chilvers, from UEAs School of Environmental Sciences, argue that the concept of responsible innovation should underpin the so-called fourth agricultural revolution, ensuring that innovations also provide social benefits and address potentially negative side-effects.

Each of the previous revolutions was radical at the time – the first representing a transition from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture, the second relating to the British Agricultural Revolution in the 18th century, and the third to post-war productivity increases associated with mechanization and the Green Revolution in the developing world.

The current ‘agri-tech’ developments come at a time when the UK government has provided £90 million of public money to transform food production in order to be at the forefront of global advanced sustainable agriculture. Many other countries are also prioritising smart agri-tech.

This, combined with private investment from organisations including IBM, Barclays, and Microsoft, means that ‘Agriculture 4.0’ is underway, with technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics increasingly being used in farming.

Dr Rose, a lecturer in human geography, said: “All of these emergent technologies have uses in farming and may provide many benefits. For example, robotics could plug potential lost labor post-Brexit in industries such as fruit picking, while robotics and AI could enable better chemical application, saving farmers money and protecting the environment. They could also attract new, younger farmers to an ageing industry.”

Writing in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, Dr Rose and Dr Chilvers warn though that agri-tech could also have side-effects, bringing potential environmental, ethical, and social costs.

“In light of controversial agri-tech precedents, it is beyond doubt that smart farming is going to cause similar controversy. Robotics and AI could cause job losses or change the nature of farming in ways that are undesirable to some farmers. Others might be left behind by technological advancement, while wider society might not like how food is being produced,” said Dr Rose.

“We therefore encourage policy-makers, funders, technology companies and researchers to consider the views of both farming communities and wider society. We advocate that this new agricultural tech revolution, particularly the areas funded by public money, should be responsible, considering the winners, but particularly the potential losers of change.

Dr Rose added: “This means better ways, both formal and informal, to include farmers and the public in decision-making, as well as advisors and other key stakeholders sharing their views. Wider society should be able to change the direction of travel, and ask whether we want to go there. They should be able to question and contest whether benefits to productivity should supersede social, ethical, or environmental concerns, and be able to convince innovators to change design processes.

“Responsible innovation frameworks should be tested in practice to see if they can make tech more responsible. More responsible tech saves controversy, such as that surrounding genetic modification, ensures farmers and the public are behind it, and can help to deliver on the policy objectives.”

Original article: Agriculture 4.0: Broadening Responsible Innovation in an Era of Smart Farming

 

LIFE AgRemSO3il First visit from the external monitoring team NEEMO

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On February 28th, 2019 the first visit from the external monitoring team, NEEMO, took place in the IMIDA facilities located in Murcia, Spain.

The purpose of this visit was to monitor the progress of the AgRemSO3il’s actions since the its beginning on July 1st, 2018. In order to do so, each partner made a detailed presentation of the progress of the actions that they have been developing since the date mentioned previously as well as they presented all the supporting documents, like timesheets, deliverables, invoices and internal procedures to the monitoring team NEEMO.

LIFE AgRemSO3il Kick-off meeting with the Contracting Authority

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On November 6th and 7th, 2018 two of the AgRemSO3il partners attended the kick-off meeting for ENV and GIE LIFE17 projects with the Contracting Authority representatives in Brussels, Belgium. The two partners mentioned previously, IMIDA and IDC, were represented by Isabel Garrido and Rodrigo Arandi-Klee respectively, who are responsible of the technical, administrative and financial management.

 

The purpose of this kick-off meeting was to provide with relevant policy topics, the LIFE programme rules, the role of the external monitoring team -NEEMO- in the projects’ implementation, and communication and dissemination matters.

 

IMIDA and IDC made a short presentation regarding the background, objectives, impacts, policy implication and technology transfer approach of AgRemSO3il.

CSIC is evaluating the influence of ozone in the soil microbial quality

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CSIC is using different approaches to evaluate the influence of ozone (O3) in the soil microbial quality.

For example, the biomass of the soil microbial communities is analyzed through the extraction and quantification of fatty acids from soil by gas cromatography (Pictures 1). In addition, the activity of microbial communities is measured thorugh different soil enzyme activities, such, urease, alkaline phosphatase and β-glucosidase (Picture 2), which are related to the cycles of nitrogen (N), phosphous (P) and carbon (C) in terrestrial ecosystems, respectively.

The results indicate that ozone may impact in the biomass of the soil microbial community, but also in the activity of soil enzymes. Ozone also enhanced the decomposition of soil organic matter and, hence, increased the content of water-soluble C and N fractions. In some cases, the greater availability of water-soluble compounds in treated samples can be responsible of the reduced enzyme activity by negative feedback mechanisms.

        

Picture 1. Process of extraction and separation of fatty acids from soil (left panel) and gas gromatograh utilized for measuring microbial fatty acids (right panel).

 

 

Picture 2. Examples of some soil samples utilized for analyses in AgRemSO3il (left panel) and colorimetric reaction for measuring soil phosphatase activity (right panel).

LIFE AgRemSO3il Kick-off meeting with the Consortium

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On July 3rd, 2018 the AgRemSO3il consortium, IMIDA, CSIC, NOVAGRIC and IDC, gathered together in the IMIDA facilities in Murcia, Spain.  

The purpose of this kick-off meeting was to have the first face-to-face meeting and to speak about the general scope of the project, the consortium’s structure, the role of each partner in each action of the project and the administrative and financial management procedure to be followed for the entire duration of the project.