On Wednesday the 20th and Thursday the 21st of April 2022 the partners of the NIVA project finally met in person after more than 2 years. Some of the partners were unfortunately not able to join the meeting in Dublin, but were participating online. However, a majority of the project partners were present in Dublin Castle.
The central theme of the Dublin meeting was “Lesson learned and deployment of digital innovations for the new CAP”. After a warm welcome by Paul Dillon on behalf of the excellent host Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) the project members elaborated on the work done and the achievements reached through evaluation sessions, deep dives, and workshops.
Sander Janssen, Project Coordinator, presented the proceedings, the objectives of the conference, the evaluation of the project’s objectives and gave an overview of the project budget. Until the end of the project in November 2022 (6 months to go), further testing of the developed tools in real life conditions in the paying agencies (over 30 different tools) is needed. A working group has also been set up to promote innovation and adoption of NIVA tools at PA level. It is important to broaden the involvement of stakeholders in the NIVA project and to continue with meetings and demonstrations.
WP5 leader Folkwin Poelman presented the communication strategy. All use cases (UCs) are different and the communication strategy cannot be one size solution, but needs to be adapted depending on the stakeholders. In order to summarize the publicity plan, a communication matrix and a strategy for reference were developed. Now it is necessary to publicize the developed tools as much as possible and to demonstrate them to the interested groups.
WP3 leader Dominique Laurent presented insights on data sharing and monitoring from satellite data. WP2 leader Jesus presented the achievements and results of all UCs. WP4 presented the possibilities of data integration of Farm Management Information Systems. WP5 presented the innovation ecosystem and next steps. Feedback on the work of NIVA was given by a panel. Jean-Luc Widlowski (DG AGRI) and Wim de Vos (JRC) joined the panel remotely and Doris Marquardt (DG-AGRI) and David Buckley (DAFM) gave their feedback from the stage at the conference.
Tomaso Ceccarelli (WR) presented the aggregated UCs KPIs and concluded that there is a lack of harmonization. Not all UCs appreciate the benefits of the tools in terms of reducing administrative burden. Matteo Rastelli (AGEA) presented the tasks of the Task Force on Administrative Burden Reduction and urged UCs to assess the reduction of burdens for agencies through savings and for farmers through time spent.
By the end of the two day project meeting all the participants had a good view on where we are and what is needed in the last half year of the project in order to reach the NIVA objectives.