The SmartAgriFood & ICT-AGRI joint call on Smart Agriculture officially closed on 15th November 2014. 128 proposals project have been evaluated by experts, herof had 17 applied for funding from ICT-AGRI. Approximately 45 projects will be funded. Projects shortlisted for funding will be ratified in early January. All applicants whether succeeded or not will be informed in the week starting at the 12th January 2015. Funded projects are expected to start in Feburary.
In its third call ICT-AGRI cooperated with SmartAgriFood, one out of four agricultural accelerator projects of the Future Internet-Public Private Partnership (FI-PPP) programme of the European Union.
The vision behind the call was to provide farmers and agricultural producers throughout Europe with an ecosystem of agricultural applications and services being compatible among each other and accessible through an online marketplace called FIspace. All aspects of contractual and financial relations between farmers and agricultural producers, data provider and end users could be covered by the online marketplace.
The SmartAgriFood accelerator wanted to fund web entrepreneurs and SMEs with new or innovative ideas for applications and services to address the lack of smart ICT tools suited for farm and wider agricultural use. New or existing applications should use FIWARE technologies (an innovative, open cloud-based infrastructure for cost-effective creation and delivery of future internet applications and services) and ideally be delivered through the FIspace platform (an integrated collaboration system).
Projects were expected to address one or more of three representative farming subsectors:
- Arable Farming - large-scale, annual crop production in the open air
- Horticulture - flowers, fruits and vegetables production in greenhouses or, at a small scale, similar crops in the open air. In addition, orchards can be included.
- Livestock Farming – animal production in the open-air closed housing systems or a mix between these.
Projects were expected to provide smart solutions for specific farm operations or farm management activities. Projects may develop and implement new solutions or modify existing solutions towards use within the Future Internet framework.