Precision farming focus

CEMA is the European level umbrella representative body of the agricultural machinery manufacturing sector. In a recent submission by CEMA to the stakeholder consultation on Societal Challenge 2 of the EU’s Horizon 2020 Framework Research Programme, the organisation stated that EU funding for agricultural research should focus on precision farming, resource efficiency, alternative energies and ICT/digitisation. CEMA has also highlighted that the EU should support the drawing up of a new strategic research agenda for agricultural engineering.

The consultation process is aimed at providing input towards the priority setting for EU research and innovation funding on the most relevant and urgent challenges for food and nutrition security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research as well as the bio-based industries and the bioeconomy in the coming years, identifying the main opportunities and bottlenecks, as well as highlighting possible outputs and defining criteria to measure success.

CEMA states that in order to ensure that future innovations will reach European farmers and will be used in the field, it will be important to research factors and perceptions that effectively act as barriers to technological change and to design adequate financial support and incentive schemes.

The organisation stresses that the ultimate aim must be to empower farmers to make meaningful advances in smart localised resource management and thus achieve significant aggregate productivity and sustainability gains in European farming.

In its submission to the consultation CEMA has identified as challenges in the area:

  • Minimising the use of scarce, energy-intensive inputs by applying them in the right way, at the right amount, in the right place & at the right time through precision agriculture. This requires knowledge of soil specificities and ever more elaborate, autonomous high-precision tools and machines.
  • Urgent action to increase the availability of usable agronomic intelligence.
  • Understanding how much efficiency in the use of machinery can be further increased by equipping it with sensors, wireless communication and steering operations with farm management software.
  • The development of decentralized systems for on-farm production and use of energy including concepts such as electro mobility, fuel cells, bio methane and the on-farm use of first generation biofuels.
  • Innovative digital structures allowing interoperability between platforms/portals/services and ease of use are of fundamental importance.

    • Much of these sentiments at an EU level echo to a great extent the desire locally to see precision and low impact tillage equipment incentivised by the TMAS II Tillage Scheme which the Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed, has indiacted will be opened for applications later this year. Given the challenges facing the tillage sector FTMTA again calls on the Minister to ensure that the new Tillage Scheme is opened for applications as soon as possible.

    FTMTA AGM

    The 2016 annual general meeting of the FTMTA to take place at 11.30am on Thursday, September 8th at the FTMTA offices near Naas. The agenda and related material have been circulated by email to member firms.