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HomeFeasibility study for joint space-agriculture solutions on nutrient management
Executive summary
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Agriculture in the European Union is at a turning point of its history. Given the evolution of environmental challenges and the population growth, farmers are confronted with two duelling challenges: the necessity to keep producing to ensure food security, whilst at the same time reducing their impact on the environment and the climate, as well as preserving biodiversity. Within this context, the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) seeks to ensure that agriculture remains sustainable and competitive, by contributing money for income support to farmers. The objectives of the CAP include ensuring that farmers can earn a reasonable living, supporting agricultural productivity in order to have a stable supply of food, promoting jobs in the agri-sector for the advancement of the rural economy, and helping address the issue of climate change and the need to manage natural resources in a sustainable manner. The current legal framework for the CAP will be reformed by 2020. In this, the framework for standards of Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions of land (GAECs) proposes the use of an electronic Farm Sustainability Tool (the FaST) for nutrients management, in order to support both the agronomic and environmental performance of farms. According to GAEC 5 and article 12(3), Member States will establish a system to provide the FaST for nutrients to individual farmers, who in return will be obliged to activate the tool, and input the information necessary for the tool to be operational and generate a nutrient management plan. It will not act as a monitoring system, but instead be to provide on-farm decision support, with at least minimum nutrient management functionalities, in addition to the possibility of adding other electronic on-farm and e-governance applications thanks to interoperability and modularity. The Commission may support Member States with both the design of the FaST, as well as the data storage and processing services required. The objective of this project was to conduct a feasibility study on an initiative dedicated to delivering such a Farm Sustainability Tool for nutrients (FaST) in Europe, aiming answer questions such as: - How could this type of tool be relevant for farmers and other identified potential users? What are the lessons learned from existing initiatives in this field? - What are the main aspects, sources of data, regulations and user requirements that should be considered when developing the FaST, as well as the scope of the tool and its potential evolution? - What are the major benefits of this tool and the main costs to be considered? - What could the tool look like? What could its architecture be? More specifically, which IT technologies should be involved to develop the most efficient tool (technical specifications analysis)? - How should it be deployed? Ultimately, the goal was to produce a technical dummy prototype of the proposed technical solution to be used as demonstrator for communication and outreach purposes in regards to the intended stakeholders and users for such a tool.
- Published:
- Corporate author(s): Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (European Commission) , PwC
- Themes: Agricultural policy
- Subject: common agricultural policy , environmental impact , feasibility study , fertiliser , food security , governance , technology
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| ISSN | ISBN 978-92-76-10008-9 | DOI 10.2762/339208 | Catalogue number KF-03-19-653-EN-N |
- Released on EU publications website:
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