PATH2DEA successfully kicked-off

This week the Horizon Europe project PATH2DEA (Paving the Way towards Digitalisation Enabling Agroecology for European Farming Systems) was successfully launched in Tulln in Austria. During the three-day kick-off meeting, the consortium discussed the action plan for the first year of the project. Moreover, the consortium visited the agroecological research and demonstration farm Grand Farm, where innovative solutions to improve biodiversity are tested.

The consortium at the kick-off meeting in Austria. (Photo: AIT)

The three-year project, which is funded by the European Commission and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI, focuses on digitalisation as an enabler of agroecological farming systems in Europe.

PATH2DEA brings together twenty organisations from all over Europe and is coordinated by the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT). PATH2DEA is embedded in a European "Agroecology Innovation System" and aims at strengthening the link with existing and past initiatives and projects, such as other European projects (e.g. AE4EU, ALL-Ready, SmartAgriHubs) or the future European R&I partnership on agroecology living labs and research infrastructures. This strong link was also emphasized by Susana Gaona Saéz, the policy officer of the European Commission, during her presentation on the first day of the kick-off.

The potential of agroecological farming systems to master many of today’s challenges to the environment, economy, health and society can be significantly promoted when coupled with digital tools and technologies. PATH2DEA is committed to unlocking digitalisation’s catalysing power to foster European agriculture’s transition towards enhanced sustainability. It builds on farmers’ competences and matches them with the rich repertoire of digital solutions already available for agriculture, aimed at tailoring digital technologies to users’ needs and fostering wide-range adoption of digital agroecological farming in the EU and associated countries.

While digital tools and technologies for use in agroecological farming are already available, they are not yet widely used. On the other hand, there are strong user-driven EU initiatives, networks and research projects focusing on agroecology, which are partly insufficiently connected with a solid knowledge base on relevant digital technologies suitable for agroecology.

PATH2DEA is set out to foster connectivity among these isolated, major assets in digital agroecology, basically presented by

available digital tools and technologies for use in agriculture,
farmers’ (traditional) knowledge, and
relevant expertise in science and technology.

Six showcase farms were selected across Europe to integrate hands-on experience on the practical application of digital agroecology and to support co-creation processes and knowledge sharing.

PATH2DEA will deliver a robust knowledge base in the frame of an open-source repository of digital tools and technologies in agroecology with decision support functionalities and a well-aligned R&I roadmap for guiding the digital agroecology transition.