A Future Internet Collaboration Platform for Safe and Healthy Food from Farm to Fork

Abstract

It is expected that the world population will further expand from the current 6 billion to 9-11 billion people in 2050. This faces us with an enormous challenge to feed this population and still keep production within the limits of planet Earth's carrying capacity. Smart Farming - i.e. the use of smart, data-rich ICT-services and applications, in combination with advanced hardware (in tractors, greenhouses, etc.) - can provide the much needed breakthroughs to producing enough good quality food in a safe and environmental-sound way. This paper introduces a Future Internet platform - called FIspace - for business to business collaboration that is currently being developed within Europe's Future Internet Public-Private Partnership programme (FI-PPP). On top of that a specific implementation will be made for the area of Smart Farming that will enable a global approach for Apps and Services development. It is expected that this will overcome many of the current bottlenecks in ICT development for Smart Farming such as interoperability and handling large amounts of data, and that it will lead to more agile and affordable software solutions. In this way, this development can contribute to the global challenge of producing enough safe and healthy food for the future within planet Earth's carrying capacity. New projects are planned and collaboration in Europe and beyond should further leverage the platform. The ambition is to become world-leading in this area.