Author: Blanca Casares (AEIDL)
From 15 to 17 December, Brussels hosted Europe’s most important annual agriculture conference, the EU Agri-Food Days 2025, the European Commission’s flagship event bringing together farmers, policymakers, researchers and stakeholders from across the agri-food sector.
The three-day programme highlighted key policy priorities for the future of European agriculture and food systems, with a strong emphasis on digitalisation, data and innovation as critical enablers of resilience, sustainability and competitiveness.
Across the three days, high-level debates on digital agriculture, artificial intelligence and data governance highlighted the need for trusted, interoperable and farmer-centred digital solutions. These priorities strongly resonate with the ongoing work of the CODECS Horizon Europe project, which aims to maximise the co-benefits of agricultural digitalisation through the development of conducive digital ecosystems.
Digital innovation and simplification: strong alignment with CODECS research
The third day of EU Agri-Food Days featured two dedicated high-level sessions on digital transformation in agriculture.
The first session “Shaping together the future of digital innovation and AI in agriculture” set the strategic vision for a digitally enabled agri-food sector, combining global perspectives, EU policy priorities and concrete research initiatives. In parallel, “Simplification through digitalisation: Making the EU Business Wallet work for farmers” focused on practical implementation challenges related to interoperability, trusted data sharing and usability for farmers.
This session set the strategic scene for a digital-ready farming and food sector. Moderated by Sasha Twining, the session opened with a keynote address by Daniela Di Gianantonio (FAO), highlighting the global perspective on digitalisation and its role in sustainable and inclusive agri-food systems. A key milestone of the session was the official launch of the European Partnership “Agriculture of Data”, announced by Jesper Stendal Sørensen from the Danish Agricultural Agency. The subsequent panel discussion brought together senior representatives from EU institutions, national authorities and the agri-food industry, including Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle (DG AGRI), Jon Emil Simonsen (Denmark), Stefan Top (CEMA) and Søren Søndergaard (COPA-COGECA). The session concluded with elevator pitches from Horizon Europe projects Agrarian, AI4SoilHealth and EUFarmBook, showcasing concrete digital solutions and research initiatives.
The discussions closely mirror findings from the CODECS Analysis of Digital Ecosystems, which demonstrates that digital uptake depends not on technology alone, but on the interaction between infrastructure, governance, skills, data availability and institutional trust within local socio-ecological and AKIS contexts.
The second session, “Simplification through digitalisation: making the EU Business Wallet work for farmers,” focused on the practical implementation challenges and opportunities associated with artificial intelligence, data sharing and digital public services in agriculture. Moderated by Anna Gunbau, the session opened with a keynote by Dr Carsten Stöcker (Spherity), who highlighted the role of digital identity and trusted data infrastructures in enabling secure, interoperable and farmer-friendly digital services.
The subsequent panel discussion brought together perspectives from EU institutions, national authorities, innovation leaders and farmers, including Christiane Kirketerp de Viron (DG CNECT), Dr Siobhan Jordan (Teagasc), Armando Poelman (Netherlands) and George Mailat (farmer). Their exchanges ensured that the debate remained firmly grounded in real-world farm needs, with a strong emphasis on usability, trust and administrative simplification.
This emphasis on simplification aligns with recent CODECS findings, which show that from the farmer’s perspective, predictability and investment viability are decisive factors for digital uptake. The CODECS Synthesis Report on the environmental, economic and social costs and benefits of farm digitalisation demonstrates that farmers value digital tools when economic returns, workload implications and environmental benefits are tangible and clearly balanced against upfront and recurring costs.
The update of this report also showed that digitalisation can enable new and more resilient business models, driven by, among other things, on improved efficiency and simplification of farming operations through automation and precision technologies.
These conclusions are further reinforced by the updated synthesis, which highlights affordability, digital skills and access to advisory support as critical enablers across different stages of farm digital maturity. The findings underline that targeted support programmes, simplified and interoperable technologies, and improved rural digital infrastructure are essential to make digitalisation viable and beneficial for farms of all sizes.
At policy level, the Report on Policy Environments for Digitalisation in Europe stresses that successful digitalisation requires coordinated action across CAP instruments, AKIS policies and data governance frameworks. It also warns against increased bureaucracy and weak interoperability standards that can undermine farmer trust and uptake. Practical implementation challenges are further addressed in the Handbook of Demonstration of Digital Technologies, which underlines the importance of on-farm and virtual demonstrations, peer-to-peer learning and structured feedback loops to translate innovation into everyday farming practice.
Reflecting on the event, Blanca Casares Guillén, Policy Expert at AEIDL, emphasised the need to move beyond technology-driven narratives:
“What clearly emerged from EU Agri-Food Days is that digitalisation will only work if it delivers real value for farmers and is supported by trust, interoperability and coherent policies. Projects like CODECS show that sustainable digitalisation is not about isolated tools, but about building ecosystems that connect technology, skills, advisory services and governance.”
Within this landscape, AEIDL (European Association for Innovation in Local Development) leads the CODECS Knowledge Accelerator, supporting learning, interoperability and capacity building to ensure that digital solutions remain farmer-centric, scalable and trusted.
Together, the discussions at EU Agri-Food Days and the evidence generated by CODECS deliver a consistent message: Europe’s agri-food transition depends on coherent, inclusive and trusted digital ecosystems that work in practice for farmers and rural communities alike.
