Digitalization of Agri-Cooperatives in the Smart Agriculture Context. Proposal of a Digital Diagnosis Tool

TLDR

Digital technologies are increasingly critical for 21st‑century businesses, and in smart agriculture they transform the sector’s economic, social, and environmental sustainability, with cooperatives poised to play a key role in adopting these innovations across the value chain. The paper reviews emerging digital technologies, outlines the digital innovation process for agri‑cooperatives, and introduces a digital diagnosis tool to aid their decision‑making. The diagnosis tool, based on the reviewed technologies, is applied to two Spanish agri‑cooperative case studies to assess their digital innovation status. These efforts enhance understanding of agri‑cooperative digitalization within smart agriculture.

Abstract

The use of digital technologies has been recognized as one of the great challenges for businesses of the 21st century. This digitalization is characterized by the intensive use of information technologies in the different stages of the value chain of a sector. In this context, smart agriculture is transforming the agricultural sector in terms of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. In some countries, cooperatives, as the most common legal form of the incumbent companies, in this rather traditional low-intensive technology sector, are going to develop a relevant role in the process of adoption of these technologies. In this context, this paper provides, first, a review of the evolution of the main digital technologies, such as Internet of Things, robots, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Blockchain, among others. Second, a description of the digital innovation process in agri-cooperatives in order to help them in the decision-making process, and third, a digital diagnosis tool for measuring cooperatives’ digital innovation. This tool is initially applied to two cases of agri-cooperatives in Spain. All of this contributes to a better understanding of digitalization of agri-cooperatives in the context of smart agriculture.