Creating smart apps and services for smart Agriculture

SmartAgriFood is a FIWARE accelerator  providing direct funding and support to SME’s, web entrepreneurs and individuals working in Smart Agrimatics to transform innovative ideas into new applications and services.

 

SMARTAGRIFOOD CALL UPDATE

The SmartAgriFood evaluation process has been completed and we would like to congratulate the 45 web entrepreneurs and SMEs (SMWEs) selected.   A lead mentor has been assigned to each of these SMWEs and in February a plan will be agreed with each SMWE to start work on the development of their new ICT applications and services using FIWARE/FISPACE.    We look forward to meeting our SMWE partners at the SmartAgriFood kick off on 25th March 2015!

 

The SmartAgriFood accelerator wants to fund web entrepreneurs and SMEs with new or innovative ideas for applications and services to address the lack of smart ICT tools suited for farm and wider agricultural use. New or existing applications should use FIWARE technologies (an innovative, open cloud-based infrastructure for cost-effective creation and delivery of future internet applications and services) and ideally be delivered through the FIspace platform (an integrated collaboration system).

Projects are expected to address one or more of three representative farming subsectors:

• Arable Farming - large-scale, annual crop production in the open air
• Horticulture - flowers, fruits and vegetables production in greenhouses or, at a small scale, similar crops in the open air. In addition, orchards can be included.
• Livestock Farming – animal production in the open-air closed housing systems or a mix between these.

Projects are expected to provide smart solutions for specific farm operations or farm management activities. Projects may develop and implement new solutions or modify existing solutions towards use within the Future Internet framework.

€4 million in funding is available for SME’s and web entrepreneurs to develop a large number of smart agriculture services and applications.  Grants of up to €100K are available which will be distributed over 3 stages:

• Stage 1 Prototype development (Up to €40,000 in EU funding, 100% funded, no matched funding required)
• Stage 2 End user trials (Up to €40,000 in EU funding funded at 75%; 25% matched funding required)
• Stage 3 Business Development (Up to €20,000 in EU funding funded at 50%; 50% matched funding required).

SmartAgriFood has joined forces with the Europe-wide ICT-AGRI network to provide SMEs and web entrepreneurs with an additional €2M in funding to pay for expert advice and support services for the successful SMEs.

Check the Quick Start Guide to this call here!

Download the full call guidelines here.

Download the full text of the call here, find your expert and apply here! 

Build and prototype your app here! 

 

Key Dates:

Action	Scheduled
Opening of matchmaking service	3rd September 2014
Pre-proposal check service	3rd September 2014
Open of on-line submission of proposals	15th September 2014
Deadline for submission of proposals	15th November 2014 at 17.00 CET

 

 

 

 

Building on:

SmartAgriFood’s objective is to create leverage to support the software ecosystem built during previous Future Internet (FI) projects SmartAgriFood1 which created a cloud based architecture for smart farming based on FIWARE; and FIspace, which developed a B2B collaboration platform, by creating a marketplace with a large number of affordable, smart apps and services with high end user take up. 

The SmartAgriFood €4m call selected the top 50 applicants from ICT SME’s and web entrepreneurs (SMWE’s) to create these apps and services.

Each of the selected 50 projects has entered into a 3 phase competitive process where only the top performing apps and services will move to the second and third phases of SmartAgriFood.

SmartAgriFood itself is composed of 5 work packages: 3 technical and 2 cross cutting (WP4 Dissemination and WP5 Management).

The 3 technical phases include:

WP1 – the Joint Call between SmartAgriFood and ICI – AGRI to find suitable applications – NOW COMPLETE

WP2 – SmartAgriFood Evaluation and Selection of SMWE projects – NOW COMPLETE

WP3 – Implementation of the SMWE Milestone & Mentoring Support Programme - ONGOING

Expected results from SmartAgriFood are identified here:

• Enlarged application domain for ITCT industry
• New revenue generating models for cloud based applications created
• Regional farming economies can expect to receive a positive boost
• AgriFood industry has new opportunities to improve production methods
• AgriFood industry can better respond to market demand
• ICT SMWE’s will have created new porducts, applications and services
• ICT SMWE’s will have developed new markets and found new customers
• Farmers and those working on the agri sector will have better quality farm management services available

                                                                                  

Back to Project list