Smart and Circular Agriculture towards Sustainability Congress

Present and future challenges faced by agriculture were grouped by OECD in a dynamic triplet that relies on science, education, technology. The most promising approach to make food production systems more efficient, mitigating agriculture footprint and increasing productivity and farmer’s income, is digitalization. This is understood as the integration of artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, unmanned aviation systems, sensors, information and communication solutions, all connected and managed by the Internet of Things (IOT). Scientific research also embraces several other challenges such as: improving food nutritious quality, recovering soils and their biodiversity, protecting crop biodiversity, and increasing crop resilience to climate change as well as to new pest and diseases. In parallel with these issues, education needs to prepare a new generation of farmers able to adopt technologies, which in turn can make agriculture more attractive to younger people, reconciling them.