SustainIT project Living Lab reviewed the progress of country Living Labs

Project SustainIT has reached halfway mark and partners reviewed the progress and challenges related to Living Labs in all four countries. The Living Labs are essential element of the project as the data collection of digitalization challenges, validation of the data and co-creation of solutions with value chain stakeholders takes place trough country Living Labs. Partners examined the use of Living Labs’ format as well as topics covered in each country. Each partner has managed to attract variety of stakeholders to the Living Labs with group in individual meetings ranging from 7 to 30 participants.

New round of stakeholder meetings in Living Labs in 2022 has provided valuable feedback for workpackages on public sector interactions (WP4) and existing databases (WP2). As the Living Labs from 2021 already demonstrated, the biggest challenges for digitalization are similar.  One of essential question is how to better utilize the already existing data as considerable amount of data is already being collected, but the databases are interoperable. This is not only a technical challenge, but requires addressing the legal side, fair sharing of costs and addressing the data rights of farmers as the primary producers of data, who also filter the data for other stakeholders.

From April to June, the Living Labs covered the topics of ongoing agricultural data initiatives and cooperation possibilities with digital innovation hubs. In the end of summer, the Living Labs will cover the topic of consumers’ interests and impact of animal welfare labelling and data exchange and potential for new business models (WP3).