Enabling Multistakeholder Dialogue through Digital Co-Creation in Agricultural Settings: A Case Study of Conventional and Organic Farmers in CAPSHELLA

Abstract

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) currently dominates the debate on innovation in agriculture. Digitization has the potential to impact on agriculture as tractors and chemicals did during the 1950s. The direction of this impact is largely unpredictable because ICT is a neutral and enabling technology, where defining the challenge (e.g. sustainable systems vs yield maximization) is as important as working on the technical solution (e.g. using a specific sensor type). For enabling digitization to serve key sustainability challenges of nowadays agriculture, a debate among end-users groups with different starting perspectives (e.g. organic and conventional farmers) is needed. We report a case of interaction between organic farmers (from Italy and Greece) focusing on community based agro-biodiversity management and conventional farmers (from Netherlands) involved in precision agriculture practises. The objective of the case study, within H2020 project CAPSELLA, was to use the co-creation process for an application as proof of concept about the possibility to use digitisation as a neutral framework in which diverse farming cultures can dialog and learn how to benefit from digital opportunities to reach common sustainability aims. During the cocreation experience, different positions and visions of the two groups were evident. Nevertheless, the initiative worked as an open space where the involved actors realised a practical link between the two domains which is shown by the converging topics covered by the two applications developed. A qualitative and a sensor based soil quality assessment and management tool derived from the process. The two tools can be integrated in order to be useful to both farmers’ groups