Oksana Hrynevych, Agriculture Project Manager at EIT Food, explains why precision agriculture is essential for informing farmers and strengthening our food system
As agriculture faces mounting pressures from climate change, resource scarcity, rising input costs, and increasing demand for sustainable food production, precision agriculture and smart farming are becoming essential tools for the future of farming.
By combining technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), satellite imagery, remote sensing, drones, IoT sensors, and data analytics, farmers can gain deeper insights into their fields and make more accurate, timely decisions. Rather than simply introducing more technology, these approaches empower farmers with actionable information that improves productivity, optimises resource use, and supports long-term environmental sustainability.
EIT Food is Europe’s largest and leading food innovation community, working to connect partners across Europe and fund innovation to build a sustainable, resilient, and healthy food system.
The Innovation Platform spoke to Oksana Hrynevych, Agriculture Project Manager at EIT Food, to explore how precision agriculture can strengthen food system resilience and how EIT Food is helping to drive the adoption of smart farming solutions across the agrifood sector.
What potential do you think precision agriculture/smart farming has to transform farming and food production? How can it strengthen food systems’ resilience?
I think precision agriculture and smart farming have enormous potential, particularly because they allow us to move from farming based mainly on averages and assumptions towards more informed, site-specific, and timely decision-making.
Agriculture is becoming increasingly exposed to uncertainty: climate variability, water scarcity, input costs, soil degradation, and changing market conditions. Technologies such as remote sensing, IoT sensors, satellite data, AI, and decision-support tools can help farmers understand what is actually happening in their fields and respond much more precisely. This can mean applying water, fertilisers, or crop protection products where and when they are really needed, identifying problems earlier, and ultimately producing more with fewer resources.
But I don’t see precision agriculture as a transformation in itself. Its real value comes when technology enables a better farming system. For example, combining field data with agronomic knowledge can support regenerative practices, improve soil and water management, reduce unnecessary inputs and help farmers understand the impact of the decisions they are taking.
From a food-system perspective, this can contribute to resilience by making farms more efficient, adaptive and less dependent on scarce resources, while also generating better data to understand what is happening at farm and landscape level. The opportunity is therefore not simply to make farming more ‘digital’, but to make it more informed, adaptive, and sustainable.
Why is it important for farmers to utilise precision agriculture tools? What challenges can it help overcome?
For me, the main reason is quite simple: farmers are making increasingly complex decisions in an environment where uncertainty is increasing, and they need clear and concise information to make the best one.
A farmer cannot manage every part of a farm in the same way when there can be significant differences in soil, moisture, crop development, or pest pressure even within the same field. Precision agriculture can help reveal those differences and turn data into actionable information.
It can help farmers address challenges such as water scarcity, rising input costs, soil degradation, labour constraints, and climate variability. It can also support earlier detection of problems and more targeted use of inputs, potentially improving both economic and environmental performance.
However, I think we should be careful about assuming that giving farmers more data automatically means better decisions. The challenge is not only collecting data; it is making that data useful, understandable, and actionable. A farmer doesn’t necessarily need another dashboard, but they need a reliable recommendation or insight that helps them decide what to do differently tomorrow.
This is why I strongly believe in combining technology with agronomic expertise, farmer experience, and practical field validation. The best solutions are those that fit into the farmer’s workflow, demonstrate a clear return on investment, and solve a real problem rather than adding another layer of complexity.
Can you share any examples of precision agriculture/smart farming initiatives that EIT is facilitating/supporting?
One example that I find particularly relevant is EIT Food’s Test Farms programme, because it is built around the principle that technologies need to be tested and validated in real agricultural environments, with farmers, rather than remaining at the level of a promising technology or laboratory prototype.
Through Test Farms, EIT Food supports agrifood-tech startups to test and validate their solutions directly on farms. These can include technologies related to remote sensing, farm monitoring, decision-support systems, robotics, soil and crop monitoring, and other digital farming solutions. What is particularly valuable is the connection between startups, farmers, agronomists and other ecosystem actors, because it allows us to understand not only whether a technology works technically, but whether it actually creates value in a real farming context.
More broadly, through EIT Food’s resilient agriculture portfolio, we are also increasingly interested in how digital technologies and data can support the measurement, reporting, and verification of agricultural outcomes. For example, satellite and remote-sensing data can help monitor crop development, land management, and certain regenerative agriculture indicators across much larger areas than would be possible through field measurements alone.
For me, this is where the real opportunity lies: using smart farming technologies not as an isolated digital layer, but as an enabler of the transition towards more resilient and regenerative agricultural systems.
A recent example, in terms of startups that we work with, is Atfield Technologies, whose precision viticulture platform was tested through the Test Farms programme in vineyards in Spain. By combining sensor data, weather intelligence and predictive analytics, the solution helped growers improve decision-making around disease management, irrigation, and harvest planning while reducing resource use.
Alongside farmers, who else does EIT Food support to implement and understand precision agriculture?
I think one of EIT Food’s strengths is precisely that it does not look at innovation from the farmer’s perspective alone. Agricultural transformation requires an ecosystem.
We work with startups and technology providers, helping them validate their solutions in real agricultural environments and understand the needs of farmers. We also work with corporates and food companies, which increasingly need better data and tools to understand and transform their agricultural supply chains.
Agronomists and advisors are also extremely important. They are often the bridge between technology and the farmer, translating data into practical recommendations and helping farmers integrate new solutions into their existing management systems.
Beyond that, there is a role for research organisations, universities, investors, policymakers and other ecosystem actors. Each brings a different piece of the puzzle: from developing the technology and generating evidence, to financing adoption, creating the right policy environment and scaling successful solutions.
And I think this is particularly important for precision agriculture because adoption is not only a technology challenge; it is an ecosystem and behaviour-change challenge. A solution can be technically excellent, but if it doesn’t fit the farmer’s reality, if the business case isn’t clear, or if there is no support to interpret the information, it is unlikely to scale.
This thinking is also reflected in EIT Food’s Landscape Model, which works across entire agricultural landscapes rather than focusing on individual farms in isolation. The model brings together farmers, food companies, technology providers, advisors, researchers, investors and public authorities to align incentives, generate evidence and support the adoption of tools, including precision agriculture solutions, that can help deliver measurable environmental and economic outcomes at scale.
I see EIT Food’s role as helping to connect these different actors so that innovation moves from the technology provider, through validation and knowledge, all the way to practical adoption on farms and, ultimately, impact across the food system.
Please note, this article will also appear in the 27th edition of our quarterly publication.
