FutureFarm: Addressing the needs of the European farm of the future: Findings of the first two years

Abstract

In the future, European farmers will have to effectively manage information on and off their farms to improve economic viability and to reduce environmental impact. To this end, an integrated information system is needed to advise managers of formal instructions, recommended guidelines and implications resulting from different scenarios at the point of decision making during the crop cycle. This will be enabled through better decision making by the farm managers with the help of a management information system. Such an information system has been defined; both its internal parts and the required infrastructure to support it. FutureFarm is an EU funded 3-year project involving 15 partners from 10 EU countries. The project addresses wide issues of development from public awareness, decision support, compliance to recognized management standards, socio-economic impact, energy efficiency, biofuels and robotics. The core technology has to take the already extensive experience in Precision Farming research and integrate it into a farmer-based prototype system. In FutureFarm the appropriate tools and technologies have been conceptually designed, prototypes developed and evaluated under practical conditions. Precision Farming as well as robotics are very data intensive and provide a wealth of information that helps to improve crop management and documentation. Based on these technologies a Farm Information Management System has been developed to deal with the information intensive farm of the future. This paper describes the outcomes of the FutureFarm project for the first two years of its duration.