Digitalisation in fruit production in the Horizon Europe CODECS project

On 23 November 2023, a first workshop was held at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague(CZU), Faculty of Economics and Management (FEM) with representatives of farmers – fruit growers,the Ministry of Agriculture, the Fruit Growers Union of the Czech Republic, the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Information (ÚZEI), the Research and Breeding Institute of Pomology Holovousy Ltd and others. The meeting was organised by the Department of InformationTechnologies (DIT) at FEM CZU and Czech Society for Information Technologies in Agriculture (CSITA),a registered association, and was held as part of CODECS (Maximising the CO-benefits of agricultural Digitalisation through conducive digital ECoSystems), a four-year Horizon Europe project.

CODECS aims to advance sustainable digitalisation by developing methods and tools that will strengthen our collective understanding, assessment and prediction of the benefits and costs of digitalising farms. The project´s initiatives support the emergence of digital ecosystems that maximise the benefits of digitisation for all. The project includes 21 Living Labs (pilot areas with demonstration farms) located in 16 countries, one of which is the Czech Republic with the demo farm Bromil s.r.o., a farmer growing fruit on 150 hectares of orchards. After the workshop, participants interested in learning about the orchard and its management visited the farm.

During the workshop, the current state of digitalisation in the fruit industry in the Czech Republic was discussed. Participants exchanged views on the biggest obstacles, threats and opportunities forsupporting fruit production in the Czech Republic. Following the workshop, a visit to the Lukrena a.s. farm was conducted in January 2024 to determine the use of data from the automated operation ofthe farm. Follow-up interviews with farm representatives at different levels of digitisation will be conducted during the year to map the digitisation process and its economic costs and benefits. Representatives of government institutions that shape policies affecting the digitisation of agriculture are involved in mapping the conditions for digital transformation across the sector in collaboration with CODECS project researchers. In early March 2024, a conversation on digitalisation in agriculture was held with a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture´s Department of Registriesand the University of Cordoba, which is leading the work on policy recommendations in CODECS.

Following the discussions during the workshop, drone imaging was taken on 12 April 2024 at the Bromil s.r.o. orchard. The images will contribute to the assessment of the orchard´s condition and will also be used to create a digital tour of the orchard including information for the wider public -one of the project outputs. For more information about the project, visit https://www.horizoncodecs.eu/.

The results of the findings will be presented at a follow-up workshop in autumn 2024. Those interested in the issue of digitalisation in fruit growing and in participating in future workshops can contact motyckova@pef.czu.cz.