The agricultural sector is facing major challenges in terms of food security, climate change, water scarcity and energy demand. Upcoming digital and exponential technologies have the potential to disrupt today´s agriculture. This transformation will require concerted actions with an integrated systems approach to smoothly guide the transition to a digitized agriculture. The aim of Agriculture 4.0, Feeding the next generation, is to explore recent developments and future prospects in digitalization of agriculture and to discuss socio-economic impacts as well as the impact on agricultural research and Food 2030 through bringing key actors together. Furthermore, Agriculture 4.0 is a co-organisation of Agrolink Flanders and KATANA.

The event Agricultural 4.0 was yesterday, 11^th may at 9.00 a.m in VLEVA, Brussels. The conference was divided in two sessions, the first one called: “How will future farming look like?” and the second one: “Innovation in digitalization of agriculture”; furthermore, with panel discussion in the end of each session: “Socio-economic implications of disruptive technologies in future farming” and “How should agricultural research institutions cope with Agriculture 4.0”.

One of the most interesting speech of the event was “Food 2030” by Hans-Jörg Lutzeyer, Senior Policy Officer at DG Research and Innovation. The priorities of Food 2030 are: Nutrition for sustainable and healthy diets, climate smart and environmentally sustainable food systems, circularity and resource efficiency of food systems and innovation and empowerment of communities.

In the panel discussion they talked about the importance of Agriculture 4.0. Vesna Crnojevic, the co-funder of the BioSense Institute – Research and Development Institute for Information Technologies in Biosystems, said that: “The solution for the food production must be Agriculture 4.0 from now on”.

Raf De Vis, director of the Research Station for vegetable Production, supported the importance of keep data and on the need of platform and public corporation: “We need history to apply the models”.

Pascal Bergeret, Doctor in Agricultural Economics in Montpellier University, claimed that “The research can´t go on without the education” and also that “the electronic infrastructure must be open, available and sustainable” and especially, about the importance of the “Sustainability of data infrastructure”.