AgTech 7 Education Program for Agri-Tech Deployment from Farm to Fork

Context

The AgTech program was born in the face of the lack of interdisciplinary knowledge and the lack of multi-stakeholder mobilization in the field of agroecology and across the entire food chain from farm to fork. Thus, he wanted to bring together students from higher education establishments and European research institutes, agri-food companies and investors.

AgTech7 is the result of the "A Knowledge Alliance of Agribusinesses, Academia and Business Angels for Disruptive Farm-to-Fork Agri-Tech Training (AgTech7)" project. It is an Erasmus+ program (Key Action 2: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices) financed by the “Grant Agreement” number 612221.

The project is a consortium, led by the University of Novi Sad (UNS) in Serbia, with seven other partners across Europe. It officially starts in March 2020 and a teaching program is carried out at Yasar University in Izmir.

The general objective of the project is to significantly and practically improve the knowledge of students from higher education institutions, European research institutes and managers of “internal” incubators, agribusiness entrepreneurs on agro-technology. The courses are mainly based on the study of the scientific literature on these subjects, on theoretical courses, practical exercises (Google Colab and Qgis mapping software) or case studies. This work is often the subject of a final restitution afterwards.

The project

The AgTech7 program is based on 7 different themes:

• The value chain and the food system;
• IoT (Internet of Things) and earth observation to increase agricultural yields and increase resource efficiency;
• Data analysis in agricultural management information systems;
• Artificial intelligence in supply chain optimization;
• Financial innovation for better agri-food availability in terms of financing and insurance;
• The provision of tools to facilitate the start-up of agro-technological companies (Lean start-up);
• Neuro-scientific marketing techniques to change diets and personalized branding.

The AgTech 7 teaching program provides personalized development resources adapted to the specific needs of students and according to the different learning techniques of each. Its form can take various aspects: class, round table, workshop, discussions, fire-chats, gamification, MOOC-style learning...

The teaching module aims to acculturate to contemporary agro-technological concepts from farm to fork. It also aims to improve the entrepreneurial skills of higher education students, internal incubator managers, teaching staff and agribusiness staff, by co-creating the curriculum and testing it with an interdisciplinary audience.

Finally, it aims to enable the exchange, flow and co-creation of knowledge, offering a practical and easy-to-grasp approach using concrete examples of agro-technology deployments from across the region. food value chain, from farm to fork.

Results

The education program is recent and for the moment the first results have not yet been communicated.

For who ?

The program is intended for students and students. in European exchange within the framework of the Erasmus program, student in themes related to agriculture, agro-technology, agri-food, food, environment, health...

With who ?

The project is led by the University of Novi Sad (UNS) in Serbia and has seven other partners across Europe. Among them: the European Business Angel Network Asbl in Brussels, the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, the University of Novi Sad in Serbia, the South-East European Research Center (Seerc) in Thessaloniki in Greece and the information systems and technology center of NEUROPUBLIC A.E. in Athens, Greece.

This fact sheet was written by Nadja Camille, LF project manager in March 2023.

Sources : 

• https://www.agtech7.uns.ac.rs/learning-materials/

Last modification : 21 Jun 2023.