How Can Tradition And Innovation Walk Hand In Hand In The Agri-Food Sector?

In a world threatened by climate change, biodiversity loss, and growth pressure on food industry, farmers have a crucial role in perpetuating traditional knowledge and sustainable farming practices.

However, tradition is unfortunately not enough.

To compete in the global market, small- and medium-sized farms and farm structures in rural areas need to bridge the current technological gap which separates them from large farms. GUARDIANS is an EU-funded project aiming to understand farms and farmers’ challenges in order to empower them through a set of cost-effective and human-centric digital and technological solutions. Twenty-two partners from 9 countries are involved in GUARDIANS’ journey.

To explain more about this project, GUARDIANS has released a new video.

GUARDIANS guides farmers towards the integration of technologies and digital solutions while preserving local communities and their territories in order to support a sustainable food industry.

Digital solutions will be applied in 4 testbeds (arable crops, woody crops, grassland for livestock grazing, and regenerative agriculture) and then on 21 farms: 7 in Spain, 7 in Italy, 1 in Czechia, and 6 in Sweden.

Farmers have the power to preserve the biodiversity of their territories. For this reason, GUARDIANS will design a co-creation methodological framework and guarantee a multi-actor approach, integrating farmers and agricultural stakeholders at all stages of the project, as well as scientists, technicians and SMEs.

Also, farmers’ technology acceptance and engagement will be assessed to ensure alignment between the key players and project goals.

As farmers continue to embrace pioneering digital technologies, GUARDIANS aspires to foster new sustainable farming approaches and enable the related environmental and social impacts. This is the future that GUARDIANS wants to build.