Paris, 8 January 2007


EFITA newsletter / 291 / European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


Did you know that this newsletter is the engine of a living lab?
But our newsletter in French with its around 24000 subscribers is a more powerful one.
See (as recommended hereafter by Sjaak WOLFERT): http://www.openlivinglabs.eu/


EFITA 2007 / List of agricultural ICT companies in your countries
On the efita web site, I maintain a list of French Agricultural ICT companies with the addresses of their web sites. There are small lists of Austrian and Italian companies. Could you send me similar lists for your countries? We could present a complete European catalogue at EFITA 2007.
See: http://www.efita.net?d=5035
Contac: Guy WAKSMAN
E-mail: waksman(a)acta-informatique.fr


EFITA 2007 / I sent a first summary (provisional version)! (GW) AND YOU?
>> Title
Situation of French Agricultural ICT in 2007

>> Summary
From different surveys performed in France, we try to describe the situation of Agricultural ICT in France and to emphasize the most impressive trends observed for the last years in different productions from arable crops to cattle growing, as well as at regional level.
In the first part, we present the most significant results of the above mentioned surveys, and in a second part we adopt a more qualitative approach and describe the most innovative and / or successful services used by farmers and based on the Internet. A third part presents the respective roles and strategies adopted by public, professional and private organisations aiming at offering services and goods to farmers. Our conclusion is an attempt to draw a few perspectives.

>> Authors
Waksman Guy, ACTA Informatique, waksman(a)acta-informatique.fr
Escriou Hervé, ITB, Escriou(a)itbfr.org
Rognant René, FIEA, rrognant(a)fie-arsoe.com
Gentilleau Christian, TIC-AGRI, c.gentilleau(a)tic-agri.com

Could we try to organise a session at EFITA 2007 about the situations of agricultural ICT in our countries? (GW)


All the documents of our last seminar (20 December 2007) about agricultural information standardisation and exchange
See: http://www.acta-informatique.fr?d=6597


About our interactive WebTV project
See: http://www.acta-informatique.fr?d=6632


8th International Symposium On Modelling In Fruit Research And Orchard Management
1 – 4 July 2007 - EINSIEDELN - Switzerland
e symposium title says it all - the use of models in relation to orchard management and fruit research. The scientific scope of interest includes, but is not limited to:
- Plant protection models: pest phenology and management including decision support systems
- Combination of pest- and disease models with and physiology and/or growth modelling
- Climate-plant interactions with special focus on global change issues
- Combination of plant architecture modelling, plant protection and physiology
- Physiology and growth responses in general
See: http://www.hortplus.com/ISHSModel/index.htm


Agro-food business embraces 'Living Labs' as a new strategy for innovation
Innovations in agriculture work out the best in learning networks or living labs. That was the conclusion of the 15th biennial conference of the Dutch association for ICT in agriculture, food and the environment (EFITA-member VIAS), held on the 30th of November 2006. Entrepreneurs, governmental bodies, research and education work together on new innovative solutions. This goes beyond the traditional farmers’ study groups.
According to Hans Schaffers from the Telematics Institute, the core of ‘living labs’ is that the laboratory comes to the users and that they are involved in the complete process of innovation. The model of living labs has recently become important in Europe under the Finnish EU-chairmanship. Usually, ICT plays a major role in living labs. Also in agro-food business, ICT plays a key role in new innovations to improve quality and efficiency, as well at farm level as at chain level. During the day, the involvement of knowledge institutes, universities and schools was regularly emphasized.
The conference was visited by approximately 160 participants form all kind of different backgrounds. The large number of subjects was spread over four parallel sessions on the organization of learning networks, public-private knowledge infrastructure, connecting to the production chain and geo-information supply. A few representative examples of presentations are: ‘Restaurant of the future’, ‘Safe food production: from victim to entrepreneur’, ’Digital invoice-processing: easy, fast and simple’ and ‘Virtual earth: the platform for a geo-living lab?’ There was also a small exhibition where app. 10 organizations demonstrated their products and services related to the conference’s theme.
The conference chairman Bart-Jan Constandse (in everyday life chairman of the Dutch farmer’s association LTO) concluded that innovation was removed from the exclusive ‘boffins club’ (emphasizing technology only) and has become a cooperative task of entrepreneurs, researchers, students and ICT-workers, in order to create added value.
More information (in Dutch): http://www.viassymposium.nl
See also http://www.openlivinglabs.eu/
Contact: Sjaak WOLFERT
E-mail: sjaak.wolfert(a)wur.nl


Visionary... (British joke)

A married man left work early one Friday afternoon. Instead of going home, he spent the weekend (and his money) partying with the boys.
When he finally returned home on Sunday night, his wife really got on his case and stayed on it.

After a couple of hours of swearing and screaming, his wife paused and pointed at him and made him an offer.
"How would you like it if you didn't see me for a couple of days?!?"

The husband couldn't believe his luck, so he looked up, smiled and said, "That would suit me just fine!!"

Monday went by, and the man didn't see his wife. Tuesday and Wednesday went by and he still didn't see her.

Come Thursday, the swelling went down a bit and he could see her a little out of the corner of his left eye.

Contact : Bernard P AUXENFANS
Email: auxenfansb(a)attglobal.net


About the EFITA mailing list
You can use the efita moderated list (>3000 subscribers) to announce any event / product / web site / joke (!) related to IT in agriculture, environment, food industry and rural areas.
If you do not wish to receive our messages, please see:
http://www.efita.net to remove your E-mail address from our mail list.