One of the challenges that the agri-food sector will be facing in the coming years is the digitization of agricultural activity and the use of new technologies to achieve a sustainable agri-food sector that is both profitable and capable of competing in all markets.
With the aim of helping professionals and companies in the agri-food sector in their transition towards the necessary digitization of the food chain, AINIA has organized the First Digital Transformation Meeting.
Digitization to boost the competitiveness of the food chain
David Martínez-Simarro, AINIA's head of strategic business development and alliances, highlighted the five main challenges that the agri-food industry must face in the process of digitization. These challenges are: complying with increasingly high-quality standards to respond to the demands of informed and demanding consumers; adapting to the requirements derived from traceability and food safety; developing more efficient, optimized, and sustainable processes; promoting the customization of production; and establishing more effective collaboration mechanisms in the value chain.
Bernardo Lafuente and Francisco Armengol, IT directors at Choví and Vicky Foods, respectively, presented the digital transformation outlook of their respective companies as well as the success stories in their companies.
The second part of the meeting was devoted to current and future digital solutions and technologies. Vicente Botti, a professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV-VRAIN), spoke about the basic concepts of artificial intelligence and its impact on Industry 5.0, reviewing some of its main applications, trends, and benefits. Among other participations, the CEO of Solver ML, Jordi Mansanet, presented real cases of application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the agri-food sector.
Agriculture 4.0's challenges and opportunities
The last part of the meeting was dedicated to the challenges and opportunities posed by agriculture 4.0. "Precision agriculture is a strategy that uses the detection of variability in crops to improve efficiency in the use of resources, yield, competitiveness, profitability, and sustainability of agricultural production," stated Jose Blasco, a researcher at the Valencian Institute for Agricultural Research (IVIA). "Achieving this requires combining local agronomic knowledge with tools (such as artificial intelligence), massive acquisition of data and images, robotization, communications, and new technologies," he added.
Edgar Llop, Process Automation and Spectral Sensor Technologies at AINIA, explained the possibilities that robotics and photonics are bringing to the agricultural sector by presenting real-life examples.
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