Recent advances in information technology offer unprecedented opportunities for the agricultural sector, including novel methods of meat traceability and data acquisition. However, the uptake of digital technologies remains faster in crop and dairy farming than in meat industry. One of the main reasons for this situation is the required upfront investment and the uncertainty around recovering the costs. It is likely that part of these costs will ultimately fall on the consumer, and it is currently uncertain whether the consumer is willing to cover them. We examined the preferences of beef buyers in Sweden for information available at the point of purchase. In total, 1010 participants provided valid responses to a Best-Worst Scaling survey administered online. The results of the general model showed that country of origin was the most important factor for consumers, with many associating meat produced in Sweden with high animal welfare and environmental standards. The study also found that over 50 % of respondents were satisfied with the current regulations regarding animal welfare and food safety. In the subsequent step, employing a latent class model, we identified three groups of respondents: Information Seekers, Indifferent Shoppers, and Price-driven Shoppers. Information Seekers valued detailed information about beef higher than price and were more likely to be female and middle- to high-earners. Indifferent Shoppers paid little attention to information at the point of purchase and were guided more by price. Price-driven Shoppers were mostly guided by price and considered it the most important attribute.

Cybersecurity represents a critical challenge for data-sharing platforms involving multiple stakeholders, particularly within complex and decentralized systems such as livestock supply chain networks. These systems demand novel approaches, robust security protocols, and advanced data management strategies to address key challenges such as data consistency, transparency, ownership, controlled access or exposure, and privacy-preserving analytics for value-added services. In this paper, we introduced the Framework for Livestock Empowerment and Decentralized Secure Data eXchange (FLEX), as a comprehensive solution grounded on five core design principles: (i) enhanced security and privacy, (ii) human-centric approach, (iii) decentralized and trusted infrastructure, (iv) system resilience, and (v) seamless collaboration across the supply chain. FLEX integrates interdisciplinary innovations, leveraging decentralized infrastructure-based protocols to ensure trust, traceability, and integrity. It employs secure data-sharing protocols and cryptographic techniques to enable controlled information exchange with authorized entities. Additionally, the use of data anonymization techniques ensures privacy. FLEX is designed and implemented using a microservices architecture and edge computing to support modularity and scalable deployment. These components collectively serve as a foundational pillar of the development of a digital product passport. The FLEX architecture adopts a layered design and incorporates robust security controls to mitigate threats identified using the STRIDE threat modeling framework. The evaluation results demonstrate the framework’s effectiveness in countering well-known cyberattacks while fulfilling its intended objectives. The performance evaluation of the implementation further validates its feasibility and stability, particularly as the volume of evidence associated with animal identities increases. All the infrastructure components, along with detailed deployment instructions, are publicly available as open-source libraries on GitHub, promoting transparency and community-driven development for wider public benefit.

Agrifood Data Workshop - A data workshop for agriculture and food

Agrifood Data Workshop (ADW) was a national data workshop aimed at simplifying and securing the use and sharing of data, as well as promoting innovations within the agrifood supply chain.

The workshop has provided support, tools, and methods to enhance competence and data-driven innovation among actors wishing to share data in the agrifood supply chain. The focus has been on the secure and efficient sharing of data according to the Data Governance Act, and a prototype tool for automatic data classification and publication, called “The Washing Machine,” has been demonstrated.

More Digitalized Rural Businesses – The Path Forward…

This project targeted business promoters and Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), including micro-enterprises, within the green sectors (primarily agriculture and food).

The project has:

• Assessed the needs and opportunities for support for the target group micro and small enterprises in the green sectors.

• Evaluated the offerings of business promoters aimed at increasing the digital maturity of this target group.

• Highlighted experiences from digitalization in other industries and adapted a tool to digitalize SMEs in agriculture and food.

The European Union aims to accelerate the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises through a network of European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIH) to enhance their competitiveness. However, how can this be best achieved for rural businesses? The project demonstrated how companies in primary production can benefit from the EDIH network.

The long-term goal of the project was to increase the digital maturity of Swedish micro and small enterprises in rural areas, contributing to increased production with robust economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Another goal was to enhance collaboration among business promotion actors to better understand how they can assist micro and small enterprises in rural areas to embrace the opportunities of digitalization

The project compared the support needs of SMEs and micro-enterprises in the green sectors in rural areas with the available support from business promoters. This comparison identified certain gaps that business promoters can address to develop and improve their offerings. The project disseminated knowledge about digitalization experiences from other industries and adapted a tool to further digitalize SMEs in agriculture and food. This tool is well-suited for use by EDIHs and has been shared with various business promoters. The project also compared the contributions of an EDIH focused on the needs of the target group with other initiatives aimed at the same group.

The digitization of a supply chain involves satisfying several functional and non-functional context specific requirements. The work presented herein builds on efforts to elicit trust and profit requirements from actors in the Swedish livestock supply chain, specifically the beef supply chain. Interviewees identified several benefits related to data sharing and traceability but also emphasized that these benefits could only be realized if concerns around data security and data privacy were adequately addressed. We developed a data sharing platform as a response to these requirements. Requirements around verifiability, traceability, secure data sharing of potentially large data objects, fine grained access control, and the ability to link together data objects was realized using distributed ledger technology and a distributed file system. This paper presents this data sharing platform together with an evaluation of its usefulness in the context of beef supply chain traceability. 

The opportunities for natural animal behaviours in pastures imply animal welfare benefits. Nevertheless, monitoring the animals can be challenging. The use of sensors, cameras, positioning equipment and unmanned aerial vehicles in large pastures has the potential to improve animal welfare surveillance. Directly or indirectly, sensors measure environmental factors together with the behaviour and physiological state of the animal, and deviations can trigger alarms for, e.g., disease, heat stress and imminent calving. Electronic positioning includes Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for the recording of animals at fixed points. Positioning units (GPS) mounted on collars can determine animal movements over large areas, determine their habitat and, somewhat, health and welfare. In combination with other sensors, such units can give information that helps to evaluate the welfare of free-ranging animals. Drones equipped with cameras can also locate and count the animals, as well as herd them. Digitally defined virtual fences can keep animals within a predefined area without the use of physical barriers, relying on acoustic signals and weak electric shocks. Due to individual variations in learning ability, some individuals may be exposed to numerous electric shocks, which might compromise their welfare. More research and development are required, especially regarding the use of drones and virtual fences. © 2021 by the authors.

Process to identify and prioritise farmers knowledge needs for the Swedish agriculture. Several studies have pointed out gaps and shortcomings in the knowledge chain in Swedish agriculture (Swedish Board of Agriculture 2019, OECD 2018). Two questions that have been raised are whether the research has focused on the knowledge needs farmers really have and how the cooperation among the actors along the knowledge chain works. The goal of this pilot project was to develop and test, in a small scale, a process to identify and classify knowledge needs of Swedish farmers, in collaboration with key stakeholders along the knowledge chain in the agricultural sector. The long-term goal is to scale up the process to a national level to assess farmers needs in Swedish agriculture. The purpose is to highlight what knowledge farmers request all over Sweden and to provide input to the prioritization of research and development funds. The project was carried out during the Cov-19 pandemic 2020-2021, which limited the possibility of physical meetings, and all meetings were therefore digital. Four digital workshops were conducted in slightly different ways, with farmers representing two geographical areas. Each workshop had a unique set-up of participating farmers. At the workshops, the farmers discussed and prioritized their various knowledge needs. The material from the workshops was compiled into categories and sent out for feedback to various experts, in the broad sense. The experts classified the needs according to what knowledge is already available and whether this knowledge is easily accessible. They were also asked to rank their top three most important knowledge needs for each category. A process to capture, classify and prioritise farmers' knowledge needs is presented and tested in this study. This process captures farmers' knowledge needs in a broad sense and is favourably to be used as a complement to knowledge gaps identified by specialised interest groups, such as trade associations or sector-specific centres, to provide a comprehensive picture of farmers' knowledge needs. By collaboratively highlighting and discussing farmers' knowledge needs in a broader context, the process has potential to increase cooperation and knowledge exchange between the actors in the agricultural knowledge chain.

Can eyetracking as a tool be used to educate new staff at a farm?

This pilot project evaluates the potential of eyetracking as a tool for training new staff on a farm in practical knowledge about animal welfare.

A basic prerequisite for economically profitable animal production is healthy animals with good growth. Detecting animals in need of extra care during rounds is a challenge when there are many animals that need to be checked in a short time. The experience of the staff is an important component, but access to qualified staff is a scarce commodity. The experience of the skilled staff is rarely written down but constitutes a tacit knowledge that is very sensitive to whether staff quit or fall ill. Hiring foreign labor is becoming more common, in which case the potential to take part in the workforce's overall competence will determine how well the new workers will succeed in their tasks.

By using technical tools such as eyetracking, you can record what a person is looking at in a certain environment. With this technology one could easily show and educate, e.g. staff, new employees, and students, what it is an experienced caretaker looks at when minding the animals. The technology makes it possible to visualize what an experienced caretaker is observing. In that way eyetracking has the potential to improve the working environment by streamlining the work of training new staff and getting everyone in the work team (experienced or not) to perform the tasks at the same high level as the most experienced.

Nordic knowledge and know-how in the area of agriculture and ICT was extracted and further developed in the joint Nordic project ‘InfoXT - User-centric mobile information management in automated plant production’. The aim of the project was to draw up basic recommendations and guidelines for a novel, intelligent, integrated information and decision support framework for planning and control of mobile working units. Project participants came from Aarhus University - Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Helsinki University of Technology - Information and Computer Systems in Automation, MTT Agrifood Research Finland, Swedish Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Engineering and VTT - Technical Research Centre of Finland. The work was based on a systems analysis approach that utilised data from earlier and on-going Nordic research and new prototypes as a technology platform. An initial study among Swedish precision farmers revealed user needs in information- and technology-intensive farms. Against this background, a systems concept for information management in mobile plant production environments was designed. The concept was technically validated by implementing new parts in practice. The system usability of the concept was evaluated using scenarios and internet questionnaire in all Nordic countries. The resulting system concept functions as a common description of user-friendly information systems for all actors in the value chain.

Farmers operate in a turbulent environment that includes international competition, weather conditions and animal behaviour, for example, and is difficult for them to control. However, economy and productivity always have a high priority. As a consequence, farms have started to implement lean-inspired work systems. At the same time, health and safety are of urgent concern in the sector. This article explores how famers apply lean-inspired work processes. It identifies work environment changes during and after a lean implementation, as well as possible developments in the work environment following implementation of the lean philosophy. Data were collected from three groups: lean, lean-light and development-inclined reference farms (in total 54 farms), using a questionnaire and interviews. The results indicate that a majority of the lean farms were applying several lean principles and tools, and the lean philosophy. The lean-light farms applied parts of the lean concept, while the reference farms applied some of the more general tools, used in lean and elsewhere, such as visualisation in various forms and to various extents. The results showed positive effects of lean on the psychosocial work environment, better work structure and improved information, communication and co-operation. The physical work environment was improved to some extent by lean, where advantages such as a more structured and practical work environment with less physical movements and locomotion could be noticed. The lean concept provided a more structured and systematic approach to dealing with work and production environmental issues, for managers as well as for employees.