With the advent of digitization in the agriculture and food production sectors, a plethora of data is generated by farmers, processors, retailers, and various other stakeholders at every stage of the supply chain from farm to fork. Despite the abundance of agri-data and its significant potential for gaining useful insights, this data remains largely siloed and the full potential of a data economy in agriculture remains largely unexplored.

Various factors are keeping a fully functional agri-data economy from emerging, including technical interoperability, market transparency and data ownership issues. There is also a high degree of reluctance to share this type of data. This stems from the absence of concrete real-world examples of data-sharing within the agri-food sector and the high uncertainty regarding the costs and the benefits of such endeavours, as most discussions held in workshops are confined to technical matters, leaving other aspects abstract and theoretical.

DIVINE is an EU-funded project that aims to demonstrate the cost benefits and added value of sharing agri-data, overcoming existing barriers. With an interdisciplinary consortium of 15 partners from 8 European countries, it aspires to develop an ecosystem for sharing and analysing agri-data. This ecosystem will amalgamate existing shared data while also implementing real-world, industry-led pilots devised around data-sharing frameworks. Information models in the agriculture sector will be analysed and adapted to enable data interoperability across existing agri-data spaces, Financial Management Information Systems (FMISs) and Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKISs). The outcomes of these efforts will support policymakers, technology providers, farm representatives, and other stakeholders within the agri-data landscape, enabling the examination of practical data sharing across business, technical, and policy domains.

Through the adoption of a multi-actor approach and the hands-on implementation of the ecosystem, DIVINE will create public-facing exemplars of data-sharing and the data economy in the agricultural sector, moving beyond theoretical discussions. Moreover, impact assessments will be conducted to inform stakeholders of the economic, social, and environmental benefits, while also contributing to broader climate change mitigation efforts. Aligned with EU strategies for sustainable agriculture, DIVINE is committed to constructing transition pathways towards a fully functioning agri-data marketplace, supported and driven by agri-aware business models. Consequently, DIVINE pilots focus on leveraging farm data to improve the efficiency and reduce the environmental and climatic footprint of food production.

With ICCS as the Coordinator, the DIVINE consortium consists of 15 partners that represent relevant key players across Europe from the ICT sector (ICCS, ENG, IDSA, WIT, INLE, VICOM, DIGI, NP), the agrifood sector (ITC – DIH AGRIFOOD), the agricultural sector (CREA, WFO) and the policy making domain (FarmEU). The interdisciplinarity of the consortium enables DIVINE to spread its innovations, promote new standards and engage with stakeholders crucial to the agricultural data economy.

The main DIVINE project objectives are:

1. Establish an ecosystem to aggregate private and public agri data that interconnects existing agri data spaces, thereby enabling the sharing of data among stakeholders.
2. Analyse and adapt information models in the agriculture sector to enable data interoperability across existing agriculture data spaces, Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS), and Agricultural Knowledge Information Systems (AKIS).
3. Enhance the ecosystem with facilities ensuring increased transparency in data sharing, data trust & sovereignty, data traceability & usage monitoring.
4. Establish an assessment framework for cost-benefit analysis of agri data-sharing (economic, societal, environmental, climate-related, etc.) and based on these provide transparent awareness and decision support facilities to farmers and other stakeholders in the agriculture sector.
5. Analyse and adapt agri data-sharing governance models and policies to enable their use by public/ government services; mechanisms to monitor the impact of these models at EU and global levels will be built into the ecosystem.
6. Establish a specific multi-actor approach (MAA) to engage farmers and domain experts in the agriculture sector to enable co-created research design, deployment, and validation.
7. Analyse and adapt data-driven business models for increasing and extending agricultural data exploitation, as well promotion of the project to various audiences results via suitable Dissemination and Communication channels.
8. Demonstrate and assess the impact, efficiency, and performance of the ecosystem and the developed solutions via complementary pilots to be carried out engaging the wide range of related stakeholders and pilot-specific technologies and tools.

DIVINE aims to achieve several outcomes. Firstly, it aims to co-create an EU ecosystem of agriculture data space that upholds the principles of data sovereignty, traceability, transparency, security, and fair data monetisation.

This means that farmers will have better control over their data and it will be clear who owns the data, how it is being used, and who is benefiting from it.

Secondly, the project aims to develop decision support tools that will help farmers to make better decisions based on shared data, which will ultimately lead to increased value in their operations.

Lastly, the project will provide policymakers with knowledge and tools to make informed decisions and create effective strategies for the agriculture industry at different levels.

Overall, the project is expected to bring significant benefits to the agriculture industry by promoting data sharing, transparency, and fair monetisation practices.

With these outcomes, DIVINE aims to contribute to creating an environment of trust around data spaces systems and data economy for agrifood by implementing initiatives to spread awareness and informed decisions on data sharing.

The workplan of DIVINE is divided into 7 Work Packages (WPs). One WP (WP1) is dedicated to the management of the project, 3 WPs (WP2, WP3, and WP4) address technical aspects, one WP (WP5) handles the piloting, the real-world deployment of DIVINE results through pilots, and 2 WPs (WP6 and WP7) deal with policies and the multi-actor approach. More specifically, the DIVINE WPs are the following:

DIVINE has designed four pilots across four different countries targeting four different farm enterprises. This ensures significant heterogeneity in the data being generated and analysed, and therefore allows a broad validation of our approach. Each of the 4 pilots share the commitment to reduce and mitigate the climate change and environmental impact of food production by using agricultural data towards creating more sustainable practices.

This pilot will deliver a platform for benchmarking farming data between farmers for optimising milk production and pork production. Based on this data the Advisory Service will be able to support the farmers more efficiently resulting in improved production and also having positive impact to farms carbon footprint.

This pilot is looking at what critical data sources can be accessed and are available both from private and public data sources and if these are combined with respect to the management of a crop production strategy. It will integrate these datasets into the DIVINE dataspace for enabling yield prediction strategies to be developed that would enhance the supply chain management strategies. These services will allow farmers to get better insights on the crop developments on their region, but it will also allow agri-tech providers to enhance their existing advanced DSS with additional valuable source of information.

This pilot focuses on data sharing mechanisms that will allow the exchange of agricultural data collected within their FMIS – the gaiasense Smart Farming solution in this case – with 3rd parties (e.g., IACS-Paying agencies, regional administration agencies, CAP monitoring services) in the context of new CAP monitoring and Green Deal objectives. Mechanisms for preparing and sharing selected datasets will be utilised supporting the monitoring of agri-environmental indicators on a farm and/or regional level. Targeted indicators to be monitored may include agrochemicals utilisation (e.g., pesticides, fertilisers), irrigation, land use, soil quality, harvested yields, cultivation types in the area, etc.

The traditional plantations and organic farms in the Mediterranean are facing a significant challenge, with limited and very fragmented data sharing practices. The Spanish pilot aims to enhance productivity across similar crops through the effective use of data sharing.

The core objectives of our pilot project are multi-faceted, and the focus on:

• Effectiveness and efficiency of the application of data sharing mechanisms from multiple sources
• Demonstration of the potential increase in qualitative and quantitative performance in the farms due to data sharing
• Systems for monitoring the agri-environmental scenario, together with other data shared information will be merged and used.
• Targeted indicators to be monitored may include bioagro utilisation, irrigation, land use, soil quality, harvested yields, cultivation types in the area, etc…

The pilot will take on an organic farm with over 100 Hectares in Granada, at the south of Spain, where several olive and almond plots have been selected, and a Southern Spain Meteorological Network with 100 weather stations.

The use case aims to demonstrate and evaluate the increment of benefits and added value vs. costs when implementing agricultural data sharing systems in traditional farms, from an organic perspective.

DIVINE has completed 3 on-site plenary meetings during its first year, where all the partners met and joined their forces to consolidate actions and address joint challenges.

Two critical meetings have been held with representatives from the European Commission (EC) and the European Research Executive Agency (REA). With these meetings, the DIVINE consortium ensured that the development of the DIVINE ADSE is aligned with the EU objective of establishing a common European data economy in agriculture.

DIVINE is in contact with dozens of related projects that either share a similar vision with DIVINE or examine specific technical, agricultural or policy aspects that are also addressed by DIVINE. In this frame, DIVINE has participated in many synergy events and bi-lateral discussions with sister projects to foster networking, identify common paths, align targeted activities, and potentially produce joint outputs to achieve the ultimate goal of transforming the agricultural domain in Europe.

More specifically, DIVINE has been jointly presented with DEMETER H2020 project in past conferences and workshops and has scheduled a series of joint meetings with the AGRIDATASPACE CSA project.

As a Research and Innovation project, DIVINE has established strong bonds with the research community, even before the official launch of its funding period. During the last two years, it has been presented at various conferences that attract hundreds of researchers worldwide.

DIVINE has also been presented at various other events, fostering engagement with farmers, technology providers, policymakers, and other stakeholders in the agricultural sector. Some of these were on-site events and took place in the European and African continents while others correspond to online presentations and talks.

Check out our DIVINE informative brochure below!