European Partnership of Agriculture of Data

ExpectedOutcome:

This partnership aims to enhance climate, environmental and socio-economic sustainability, and productivity of agriculture and to strengthen policy monitoring and evaluation capacities through exploiting the potential of Earth and environmental observation and other data, in combination with innovative data technologies. The partnership’s activities (parts of which will be carried out through financial contributions to third parties) are all together expected to contribute to all the following outcomes:

• Increased environmental, climate and socio-economical sustainability performance of the agriculture sector;
• Strengthened capacities to evaluate the effectiveness of policies (with reference to agriculture, environmental- and market-related policies and the combined potential effects of them);
• Increased sharing and harmonisation of data across countries and different actors (e.g. scientists, policymakers, practitioners, businesses, farmers, and other end users) based to the extent possible on FAIR^[1]data principles; the exploitation of synergies through better integration of environmental, space and in-situ observations within Europe and the consideration of the needs and capacities of different actors should be guiding principles;
• Accelerating the delivery of more and better data-based solutions to the end users, in particular farmers, the public administration and policy makers;
• Enhanced contribution from the agriculture sector to the protection of the environment, including air quality, halting and, if possible, reversing biodiversity loss in Europe, as well as to the reduction of the emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture;
• Enabling the sector and strengthen its capacity to adapt to climate change and to meet the objectives set by sustainability-related policies, considering e.g. risk analyses/indicators, such as environmental, technical, economic or social risks;
• Building the necessary structures, systems and concepts includes data infrastructures needed to develop innovative data-based solutions for both policy-making and the agriculture sector (including to strengthening the sector’s economic performance, and identify ways for the longer-term provision of acknowledged data-based solutions under consideration of possible synergies with other initiatives.

Scope:

Sustainable agricultural production and related policy monitoring needs can be supported through the provision of tailored data and data-based solutions; especially, through Earth observation^[2] and in combination with other data and data technologies. At the same time, the agricultural sector at farm level produces data during digitalised farming practises, as also does the public administration. This data can be used to strengthen capacities of the agricultural sector in the public and the private domains. Integrating different sources of data, for instance Copernicus data^[3], precision farming data, Integrated Administration Control System (IACS)-data and other reference data, would lead to even more relevant information in this context and provide scope for the development, delivery and uptake of agri-digitalisation products and services, such as decision-making support systems.

The objectives, intervention logic, the governance structures, reasoning and basic guiding principles for the functioning of the partnership are set out in the “Partnership document”^[4] and it is expected that the proposal follows the lines taken therein. Proposals should pool the necessary financial resources from the participating national (or regional) research programmes with a view to implementing joint calls for transnational proposals resulting in financial support to third parties (FSTP). The planning for these activities need to be based on the draft Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA),^[5] which was elaborated by the core group representatives from of member states and associated countries.

The partnership should coordinate research programmes and activities on digital and data technologies, Earth observation and other environmental and agricultural data between EU and its Member States and Associated Countries and trigger coherent and combined action.

While private sector actors are not expected to be in the consortium forming this partnerships, non-governmental organisations representing different relevant stakeholder groups, and businesses, are expected to be considered in the implementation of the partnership through the governance structures or FSTP (see Partnership document).

In the implementation phase, the partnership should elaborate strategies to sustain and scale up its activities and networks beyond the lifetime of the co-funded partnership.

Moreover, the partnership should develop activities to achieve the named outcomes, which must include the following:

• Enable the exploitation of the potential of public and private data, including in the combination with data technologies (including AI) for the agricultural sector in the public and private domain;
• Provide the necessary technical elements related to e.g. digital and data infrastructure and interoperability for the development of data-based solutions and digital applications in a systemic and systematic way;
• Foster the sustainability and EU-wide up-scaling or replication of solutions, and applications close to deployment stage; Demonstrate how the expected result contribute to the European Green Deal objectives and the ambition of better policy-making^[6].

The partnership activities should build on results of existing (ongoing or finished) initiatives and projects; in particular it should align to the ongoing work of the projects granted under call HORIZON-CL6-2022-GOVERNANCE-01-11. It is also expected to explore the potential for achieving synergies with relevant topics/ projects, partnerships and/ or missions particularly within Cluster 6 and Cluster 4 of the Horizon Europe programme, as well as with the digital Europe programme, the EU space programme and the common agricultural policy. Where applicable, the partnership should contribute to the development and or implementation of European initiatives and processes. This may include, e.g., informing processes and approaches in the field of policy monitoring and evaluation or identifying use options for Common European Data Spaces.

The Commission envisages to include new actions in its future work programmes to provide continued support to the partnership for the duration of Horizon Europe. The current action is intended to provide funding in relation to the activities covered by the first two annual work programmes of the partnership.

Specific Topic Conditions:

The total indicative budget for the duration of the partnership is EUR 90 million.

[1]https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/

[2]Earth observation shall be understood as all sorts of geospatial data on the environmental state of the Earth system, from space-based as well as from in-situ sensors or instruments and any other non-space-based observations.

[3]https://www.copernicus.eu/en

[4]The partnership document has been elaborated following a participatory approach by a core group set up by EU Member States and HE Associated countries. https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-04/ec_rtd_he-partnership-agriculture-data.pdf

[5]https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023-08/AgDat…

[6]https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/planning-and-proposing-law/better-regulation-why-and-how_en