Smart AKIS Network held its second meeting on September 6th and 7th in Wageningen University and Research, Netherlands. Partners shared the progress on the implementation of the technical work packages:

• MAPPING OF SMART FARMING TECHNOLOGIES: An online questionnaire will shortly be made public and distributed by Smart AKIS partners in order to identify and report more than 400 Smart Farming Technology commercial solutions, research based promising results and scientific papers. Results from the mapping process will be made available at the start of 2017 on Smart AKIS Inventory of Smart Farming Solutions on Network’s Community Platform. CEMA – European Agricultural Machinery and its national associations will engage their more prominent industry members, and Agricultural university of Athens Wageningen University & Research, BioSense and ZALF, the main University and Research and Technology Organisations in the mapping process.
• FARMERS ASSESSMENT: The interview of more than 200 farmers in France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain and UK progresses and will be ended by October. A consolidated report and national briefs will be available by Novembers with the findings on the needs, interests, and factors hindering Smart Farming adoption by the farmer community in Europe.
• INNOVATION WORKSHOPS: Smart AKIS Innovation Hubs in France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain and UK will start on 2017, when a first wave of multi-actor Innovation Workshops will take place on the first quarter focusing on the dissemination and demonstration of Smart Farming solutions inventoried and deemed as most promising for the national needs.
• COMMUNITY PLATFORM: Smart AKIS is defining the technical specifications of the online Smart Farming Community platform, that will provide from 2017 onwards, 2 main services to Smart AKIS target groups (farmers, advisory/extension services, industry, researchers): access to the Inventory of Smart Farming solutions and access to a Networking Area where message boards with collaboration and information requests will be available.
• NETWORKING: The meeting was also attended by 2 representatives from the Thematic Network on Smart Dairy Farming, “Data Driven Dairy Decision For Farmers (4D4F)” who presented its Networks and actively participated on the discussion on the planning of next dissemination and technical activities that might benefit from a joint approach.

A visit to Wageningen University & Research RobotLab was the perfect ending to the meeting, where partners got to know some of the latest agricultural robots (agbots) being develop by the host University with other top EU research institutes. If you want to take a look at Wageningen University & Research robots, visit this link. Smart AKIS 3rd meeting will take place in April 2017, on Berlin, Germany. If you want to take a look at a picture recap of the meeting, visit our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SmartFarmingNetwork/