
Project
CODECS
Maximising the CO-benefits of agricultural Digitalisation through conducive digital ECoSystems
| Acronym | CODECS |
|---|---|
| Funding | European Research Executive Agency, European Commission (Program for Research and innovation of the European Union – Horizon Europe) |
| Duration | 4 years (01.10.2022 – 30.09.2026) |
| Coordinator | University of Pisa |
| Website | www.horizoncodecs.eu |
Overview
CODECS will co-develop, together with farmers and AKIS actors, user-friendly approaches, methods, and tools able to document the co-benefits and the costs of technologies applied to real contexts. In this way, it will improve the collective capacity to understand, assess and foresee the full range of benefits and costs of farm digitalisation, and to build digital ecosystems that maximise the net benefits of digitalisation.
CODECS will develop a vision of “sustainable digitalization” which will contribute to a multi-level transition that links social, economic, and ecological aspects together, by adopting an innovative system based / actor centred approach, and an action research methodology based on coordination of 21 Living Labs through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams.
The research will study the role of 'digital ecosystems' in the rate of uptake of digital technologies and in the distribution of their costs and benefits; will develop and test three indicators (farmers' digital readiness, scaling readiness, digital ecosystem conduciveness) to monitor the level of digitalisation and foresee its potential costs and benefits. It will assess and compare the full range of social, economic, and environmental costs and benefits of farm digitalisation, identifying synergies and trade-offs between different sources of costs and benefits; it will test and demonstrate digital technologies in 21 Living Labs through in physical and virtual demonstration.
The CODECS platform will host search, demonstration, and assessment tools. CODECS has a strong commitment to get an impact in the AKIS domain and in the policy field, which will be put into practice through a dedicated work package on policy analysis and policy tools (iii) a set of policy briefs and webinars and an engagement strategy at local, national, European level through Living Labs, a science-policy interface, an AKIS network and a demo-farm network.
AGFUTURA Role
AgFutura Technologies participates as a research partner in CODECS, contributing expertise in precision agriculture, farm management information systems, and digital advisory services across multiple work packages through the project. AGFT is actively involved in the analysis of digital ecosystems, the assessment of costs and benefits of digital technologies, demonstration activities, and the development of the CODECS digital platform and impact assessment toolkit, where AGFT co-creates the technology assessment tool for users.
AGFT leads the RAMAS Living Lab, one of 20 Living Labs operating across Europe within the CODECS framework. The RAMAS Living Lab is based in North Macedonia and focuses on vegetable crops, with the RAMAS platform serving as the demo technology. It operates at TRL 5–7, targeting improved farm productivity through remote agricultural monitoring and advisory services. Within the Living Lab, AGFT conducts participatory assessment of the local digital ecosystem, maps socio-technical processes related to crop management, collects data on the costs and benefits of digital technology adoption, and organises on-farm and virtual demonstration activities. Through these activities, AGFT helps bridge practical digital farming experience with research objectives, contributing a perspective from a non-EU agricultural context and supporting the project's broader goals of making sustainable digitalisation accessible to small and medium farms.