The AGROSUS project, a Horizon Europe initiative (Grant Agreement No. 101084084), organized two participatory sessions during the Digital Agroecology Cluster (DAC) Conference in Brussels on 17-18 November 2025. These sessions brought together farmers, advisors, policy stakeholders, IT tool developers and researchers to assess the current state of digital tools supporting agroecological transitions in Europe and to identify strategies for their long-term sustainability.
The two activities produced a shared diagnosis of stakeholder needs and a joint "Challenge-Opportunity Map" with concrete recommendations on data governance, accessibility, user inclusion and tool maintenance beyond project funding cycles.
Why digital tools matter for agroecology
Agroecology integrates ecological, economic and social dimensions of food production into a single systemic framework. Its adoption across Europe has been growing steadily, supported by policy instruments such as the EU Farm-to-Fork Strategy and the Common Agricultural Policy's eco-scheme provisions.
At the same time, digital agriculture is expanding rapidly, creating new possibilities for data management, decision support and knowledge exchange. Yet the relationship between agroecology and digitalization is not without friction. Persistent challenges include fragmented tools, limited interoperability between datasets, barriers related to usability and accessibility, and unresolved questions around data ownership and governance. The environmental costs of digital technologies, including the energy consumption associated with artificial intelligence, also raise concerns that must be addressed from an agroecological standpoint.
The DAC, which groups several European Horizon projects (including AGROSUS, D4AgEcol, ReForest tools, Agroserv and Path2Dea), has become a cross-project platform for tackling these shared challenges.
How the sessions were designed
The AGROSUS communication and dissemination team designed two complementary participatory activities that ran as successive phases of a single process. Participant profiles were collected through sign-in lists and classified using colour-coded sticky notes to ensure diverse representation in each working group.
Interactive networking session
The first session, titled "Discover & Connect," asked participants to position themselves physically next to one of four totems based on their professional focus: working directly with farmers or advisors, working with open-access datasets, working with AI or satellite data, or having a policy interest or responsibility. Because of the audience composition, the open-access datasets and AI/satellite data groups were merged into a single working group.
Each group discussed three common questions: what agroecology means in one sentence, how agroecology affects daily lives, and which gaps future projects should address. Responses were captured on colour-coded sticky notes and later synthesized through qualitative thematic analysis.
Co-creation workshop
The second session focused specifically on the sustainability of agroecological digital tools. It was structured around four pillars: integration, usability, barriers (legal, economic and political) and target users and stakeholders. The format combined short lightning presentations of digital tools (supported by QR codes), breakout group work using visual mapping boards and sticky notes, and a final plenary synthesis to build the joint Challenge-Opportunity Map.
What stakeholders said about agroecology and digital tools
The networking session revealed broad agreement on agroecology as a systemic, ecosystem-aligned approach, with meaningful differences in emphasis across stakeholder groups.
Farmers and advisors
Participants in this group described agroecology as a balanced, efficient and sustainable systems approach grounded in the everyday realities of farms and rural communities. They emphasized the human and social dimensions, including farmer health, community opportunities and education. Priority gaps included the need to make agroecological practices more operationally efficient, to strengthen educational structures such as agroschools, and to ensure the social inclusion of volunteers and migrant communities.
Policy-oriented stakeholders
This group framed agroecology as an approach aligned with natural ecosystems and contributing to healthy, fairly produced food. Their responses concentrated on institutional and technical issues, particularly the need for trusted data-sharing mechanisms, improved interoperability across datasets, and information systems capable of capturing the complexity of agroecological systems without reducing them to narrow indicators.
IT tool developers and data specialists
This group characterized agroecology as a foundational framework for sustainable, resilient and fair food systems, embedded in daily life. Their discussion focused on the role and impact of digital technologies. They raised concerns about the ecological footprint of AI companies, especially energy consumption, and called for more research into the environmental and social impacts of digital solutions. They also pointed to the potential of digital tools to strengthen value chain connections and to the importance of improving accessibility, clarity and transparency.
Common ground
Across all three groups, several areas of agreement stood out. Participants consistently described agroecology as systemic and socially oriented, connecting it to fairness, health, community impact and inclusion. Knowledge, education and evidence generation were recognized as essential for advancing agroecological transitions. All groups acknowledged the relevance of digital and data-driven tools while drawing attention to current limitations in usability, interoperability, trust and alignment with farm realities.
Four pillars for digital tools sustainability
The co-creation workshop deepened the concerns raised in the networking session and organized them around four thematic pillars.
Integration
Participants identified the lack of standards, incomplete implementation of FAIR data practices (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) and limited interoperability among tools and databases as major challenges. Fragmentation due to heterogeneous data infrastructures and the difficulty of maintaining databases after project funding ends were recurring concerns. Accessibility issues for farmers, including device constraints and rural connectivity limitations, also featured prominently.
Opportunities included the creation of shared data spaces and federated approaches, the development of a single-access marketplace for different stakeholder groups, merging or connecting complementary decision-support tools, and improved interoperability with large infrastructures such as AGROSERV. These align with broader trends in agricultural data management across Europe.
Usability
Reported challenges included language limitations (many interfaces available only in English), poor mobile usability, limited customization for different user profiles and the high cognitive load of some tools. Rural connectivity constraints and a lack of perceived added value, particularly where registration is required, were additional barriers.
Proposed solutions ranged from AI-based translation to address multilingual needs, to improved interface design (navigation, map zooming, actionable links), sandbox modes that do not require login, differentiated interfaces for farmers versus advisors versus researchers, greater open-source development, and mobile-friendly design. Participants also suggested promoting digital tools as entry points to attract younger generations into agriculture, a challenge closely linked to bridging the digital divide in the sector.
Legal, economic and political barriers
The vulnerability of digital tools to political instability and rapidly changing regulatory frameworks emerged as a significant concern. High operational costs and affordability issues for small farms, persistent worries around data privacy and data protection, and low awareness of existing databases and tools were all flagged. Participants noted the difficulty of embedding agroecological principles into digital solutions that are often designed around narrow efficiency and productivity metrics.
Opportunities identified in this area included tools that simplify data integration through clear indicators, incorporating cultural norms into tool development to encourage adoption, building flexibility for small farms and vulnerable users, cost-sharing strategies and open-source models, and closer alignment between research advances and real-world applications through continuous collaboration.
Target users and stakeholders
Many existing tools appear to be designed primarily for advisors rather than for direct farmer use. Challenges included the absence of universal login systems, fragmentation across platforms, insufficient funding for co-creation with end-users, a lack of local champions for outreach, and limited integration of digital tools into education and advisory systems.
Opportunities included shared-cost schemes and new funding mechanisms to broaden inclusiveness, using mandatory farmer reporting as an entry point for new users, designing target-group-oriented platforms with simplified interfaces, strengthening collaboration with central marketplaces, and engaging users throughout the full development cycle to build trust. These approaches parallel the kind of inclusive, farmer-centred digital design already gaining traction in precision agriculture adoption.
From diagnosis to strategic recommendations
Together, the two sessions trace a clear line from stakeholder perceptions to concrete strategic directions. Demands from farmers and advisors regarding practical implementation, education and inclusion, combined with the concerns of policy stakeholders and data specialists about interoperability, system complexity and the environmental footprint of digital technologies, are reflected in the workshop's recommendations.
Four strategic axes emerged from the process: trust in data handling and governance, interoperable data architectures, multilingual and mobile accessibility, and sustainability models that extend beyond individual project lifetimes. The resulting Challenge-Opportunity Map builds directly on the multi-actor diagnosis generated in the networking session, confirming the value of combining open reflection spaces with structured cross-project co-creation.
Lessons for future digital agroecology initiatives
The DAC Conference activities demonstrated that a two-step format, first listening then co-creating, can efficiently convert diverse opinions into concrete, actionable ideas. The event functioned as a space where tools, needs and stakeholder expectations could meet and be challenged together, rather than simply a project showcase.
The activities also confirmed that many of the central issues, including trust in data, usability for farmers and long-term tool sustainability, are shared across projects. This makes multi-project clusters a natural venue for addressing them jointly. Next steps could include revisiting the Challenge-Opportunity Map with more farmers and advisors at local scale, testing small joint pilots around shared data access, and using DAC newsletters and meetings to keep the co-creation process active between events.
Building sustainable digital ecosystems for agroecology requires more than individual tool development. It demands interoperable data governance, accessible multilingual interfaces, end-user involvement at every development stage, and funding and maintenance models that outlast project timelines. The DAC's cross-project approach offers a practical framework for steering digital tools toward agroecological transitions that are equitable, inclusive and durable.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank all participants in the Digital Agroecology Cluster Conference and the teams of AGROSUS, PATH2DEA and the other cluster projects for their contributions to the networking and co-creation sessions.
Funding
This work received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the AGROSUS project (Grant Agreement No. 101084084).