The importance of open data in agriculture: Increasing performance and boosting data-driven innovations
How the Commission is supporting agriculture with different initiatives
Amid global challenges such as food security, climate change, and geopolitical tensions, the importance of agriculture continues to grow. Open data is emerging as a transformative tool in this sector, offering valuable insights into key topics like soil conditions, weather patterns, and crop performance. By enabling data-driven decision-making, farmers can adopt precision farming techniques that boost crop yields, reduce costs, and enhance sustainability, thereby creating significant impact throughout the agricultural value chain.
To support the digital transformation of agriculture and ensure continuous food security, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development leads initiatives like the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Based on a partnership between society and agriculture, CAP is designed to ensure a stable food supply, safeguard farmers' income, protect the environment, and keep rural areas vibrant. Each EU country has set national targets in its approved CAP Strategic Plan, based on 44 result indicators, like digitalising agriculture and improving animal welfare. These targets are available on an online dashboard, promoting transparency and ensuring compliance with monitor requirements.
Several agriculture data spaces, including Divine, ScaleAgDatam, and the AgriDataSpace, play a role in advancing these efforts. AgriDataSpace is working towards the development of a Common European Agricultural Data Space (CEADS), which will enable secure, trusted and transparent data sharing. This initiative, expected for 2025, opens new possibilities for monitoring and optimising natural resource use while stimulating data-driven innovations. Developments like these contribute to achieving the goals of the ‘Sustaining our quality of life: Food security, water and nature’ Commission priority, and CAP.
Whether you are a farmer, researcher, or policymaker, the opportunities offered by open agricultural data are extensive. Visit data.europa.eu to explore more than 310 000 datasets related to agriculture and contribute to building a sustainable and resilient food system for Europe.
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