Digital agriculture

Data-driven precision agriculture may be the key to guaranteeing sustainable food security for a growing world population. Agriculture covers many different areas from open field crop growing to greenhouses and cattle farming. In each of these areas innovation can make a difference by taking digital farming to the next level. Discover the latest in digital agriculture innovation here.

Agriculture has undergone a steady transformation, shifting from manual labour and purely intuitive, human-only decision-making to greater mechanisation. Digitalisation is now the latest phase in that process of change. Digital agriculture involves the use of information and communication technologies such as sensors for data collection, cameras linked to image recognition software, GPS and data processing systems. These technologies deliver targeted information and services that help to make farming more profitable and sustainable while ensuring the supply of safe, nutritious and affordable food.

The availability of data is a key enabler for precision farming. Nutrients, fertilisers, water and pesticides are administered to plants where they are needed, while animals are fed diets tailored to their individual nutritional needs based on factors such as breed, age, weight, activity level and any health issues. Robots are used for targeted harvesting, while greenhouse conditions can be manipulated to make harvest times coincide with optimal market conditions. By controlling temperature, humidity and light, growers can accelerate or delay plant growth, allowing them to schedule harvests during periods when prices are at their highest.

Digital agriculture is all about optimising production to ensure sustainably food security by helping farmers to operate more resource effectively.

This EPO technology platform helps practitioners and policymakers to discover the latest technologies available in the area of digital agriculture and keep track of ongoing digitalisation developments in real time. Building on the expertise of EPO examiners, it offers a detailed mapping of these technologies and allows you to:

identify patents mapped to 47 search concepts relevant for digital agriculture technologies
retrieve descriptive statistics for each concept, (e.g. number of patents per year, applicant rankings), explore where patents have been filed and drill down to the individual technologies covered by the 72 search concepts
review the Espacenet search query used to identify patents within a given concept and tailor it to your own specific needs (e.g. broaden or narrow the search)

The search queries are the result of collaboration between expert patent examiners and analysts from the European Patent Office (EPO) and from 15 national patent offices (Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czechia, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), who have joined forces to support researchers and innovators in their endeavours.