Done in partnership with:

Demeter: 2020 project supported by the European Union

 

DEMETER is a four-year project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 program. It focuses on large-scale deployment of smart farming solutions, driven by farmers and based on interoperable IoT (Internet of Things) platforms.

The project includes 20 pilot programs across 18 countries (15 within the EU), involving 60 partners. Using a multi-actor approach that spans the entire agricultural value chain—both supply and demand—DEMETER operates at 25 deployment sites. It engages 6,000 farmers and deploys over 38,000 devices and sensors.

 

DEMETER’s goal

The project aims to drive the digital transformation of Europe’s agri-food sector by accelerating the adoption of IoT technologies, data science, and smart farming. Its ultimate goal is to ensure long-term sustainability and viability in agriculture.

A key objective is to empower farmers and cooperatives to:

  • Use their existing platforms and machinery to extract new insights that improve decision-making.
  • Simplify the process of acquiring, upgrading, and integrating platforms, machines, and sensors—helping them invest where it’s most needed.

 

 

DEMETER’s aim

The projects aim is to put digital means at the service of farmers:

  1. Integrating human expertise with digital tools through a human-in-the-loop model that combines human knowledge with digital information.
  2. Promoting interoperability as a core enabler—extending it across data, services, platforms, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, online intelligence, and human knowledge. DEMETER connects farmers, advisors, ICT providers, and machinery suppliers to make this possible.
  3. Transforming agriculture using a broad set of digital technologies—such as the Internet of Things, Earth Observation, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence—along with modern practices like cooperation, mobility, and open innovation.

These choices were made in close collaboration with DEMETER’s large user base of around 6,000 farmers. They were tested through 20 pilot projects carried out in 18 countries. These include Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey.

 

demeter project with senzemo

 

 

20 pilots across 18 countries

20 pilots across 18 countries.

 

The overall objective of DEMETER is to empower farmers and farmer co-operatives through six defined objectives:

 

  1. Analyse, adopt & enhance:
    Analyse, adapt, and enhance existing (and if necessary, introduce new) Information Models in the agri-food sector easing data sharing and interoperability across multiple Internet of Things (IoT) and Farming Management Information Systems (FMIS) and associated technologies. Use these information models to create a basis for trusted sharing/exposure of data between farmers.
  2. Build knowledge:
    Build knowledge exchange mechanisms, delivering an Interoperability Space for the agri-food domain, presenting technologies and data from different vendors, ensuring their interoperability, and using (and enhancing) a core set of open standards (adopted across all agri-food deployments thereby) coupled with carefully-planned security and privacy protection mechanisms (also addressing business confidentiality).
  3. Empower the farmer:
    Empower the farmer, as a prosumer, to gain control in the data food chain by identifying and demonstrating a series of new IoT-based, data-driven, business models for profit, collaboration, and co-production for farmers and across the value chain, leading to disruptive new value creation models.
  4. Establish benchmarking:
    Establish a benchmarking mechanism for agriculture solutions and business, targeting end goals in terms of productivity and sustainability performance of farms, services, technologies, and practices based on a set of key performance indicators that are relevant to the farming community.
  5. Supplier relationship:
    Reverse the relationship with suppliers, through an innovative model in which suppliers are responsible for ensuring that a final solution is optimal to the farmer’s existing context and expressed needs.
  6. Demonstrate the impact:
    Demonstrate the impact of digital innovations across a variety of sectors and at the European level.

 

instaled temperature sensorinstaling sensors in demeter project

 

 

 

 

↓

See our Blog post on Why LoRaWAN is the best network for agriculture? for more.