SustainIT presentations at Maataloustieteen Päivät 2024

Finnish Agricultural Science Days took place at January 10- 11th in Helsinki. The conference is organised annually by the Scientific Agricultural Society of Finland and brings together researchers and sector representatives from various fields of agricultural sciences. SustainIT Finnish and Estonian partners used the opportunity to introduce their ongoing work on digitalization in the SustainIT project.

Estonian partners from Estonian University of Life Sciences discussed the issues related to harmonization of policy instruments of the European Union and its member states for the creation of data space for agriculture.  As the EU is working towards developing framework for cross-border and interoperable data spaces, the work on polices and harmonizing those across the EU has just started. In the SustainIT project, interviews with policy makers in four member states were used to discuss the challenges related to supporting the agricultural data space development and upskilling of stakeholders.

Finnish team presented SustainIT work on comparison of cattle health databases and the value chain stakeholders‘ feedback on the development needs related to data collection. Authors mention that as the EU legislation both on data use and animal welfare is being revised, the topic is very timely. SustainIT project combined the comparison of data bases in the four countries with Living Lab discussions to understand the challenges related to data collection, exchange and sharing.  The common issues are related to standardization of data forms, user-friendliness of databases, tools for visualization, rights of data producers and data security.