Flanders Make participates in 'Smart Farming & Food Processing'
Smart Farming & Food Processing
The entire food system needs to be better balanced with nature, environment and health. Robotics can be (part of) the solution here. New technologies such as robots, drones, sensors, AI and big data are necessary to make the transition to a balanced farming and food processing industry. The Smart Farming & Food Processing project is helping to achieve this. In the coming period, we will bring together farmers, technology developers, knowledge institutions, field labs and networking organisations around eight concrete issues. Together, we will work on new solutions and adapt existing systems.
Together we design the Future!
Innovation by cooperation
This project is primarily aimed at developing a number of concrete applications that solve issues of plant-based farms or food processors. By doing so, we want to contribute to accelerating the agricultural transition.
WHAT DOES THE PROJECT OFFER?
From the project, we recruit potential technical companies that can (further) develop an application. Subsidies are available for both the company with the issue and the technical company that will develop the application. Knowledge, expertise and support is provided from both a Dutch and Flemish knowledge institution/field lab.
Goals of the project
The project aims to make a significant contribution to the necessary transition in the agriculture and food processing industry by tackling a selected number of challenges and by developing technically and commercially promising innovative solutions to address and accelerate the transition.
There are opportunities here for companies, whereby we primarily focus on involving SMEs in this project. However, where necessary to develop the right applications, we will also involve larger companies. Where the application mentions companies, we refer to the above.
In this project, we focus on 3 selected challenges within 2 sectors, namely:
SMART AGRO
- Deployment of autonomous robots for weed control, pruning, harvesting, precision fertilisation, recognition and control of crop diseases and pests
- Automation of small crops both in the field and in greenhouses/greenhouses oa cabbage crops, chicory, strawberries
SMART FOOD PROCESSING:
- Smart automation of food handling processes, including flexible and robust production systems oa for small batch sizes
GENERAL THEME
Besides these 3 challenges, there is 1 general theme on which all pilot companies will be challenged:
Using smart data within their own organisation and in the value chain, e.g. for energy reduction, reliability, tracing raw materials, circularity and waste reduction
Project partners
