Keywords

1 Introduction

Considering that the world population is set to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 [1], and adding to the equation the ever so frequent extreme weather conditions, rising climate change and the environmental impact from intense farming [2], then the need for agriculture optimisation is rapidly becoming a necessity. Moreover, several countries are experiencing an overall shortage of skilled workers in agriculture [3]. It is this need for food security and environmental protection that smart precision farming systems, based on IoT technologies, are attempting to satisfy [4]. The agricultural IoT infrastructure transformation is enabling crop producers to receive status information from interconnect farms, crops, crop/field, equipment, storage and livestock. Agricultural corporations down to small family farms are now able to monitor the entire plantation ecosystem, spanning from: crop field physical parameters (temperature, light, humidity, soil moisture etc.), plants phenotyping, crops vigour, local climatic conditions and control of operations such as irrigation and fertilisation through automation solutions (greenhouses). The information is now gathered, processed and visualised through web-based or mobile application user interfaces directly to the stakeholders for decision making at any stage of the production process, from planting and cultivation up to storage and logistics (End-to-End farm management systems) [5]. Now, asset management is possible; farming companies can finally receive live information, optimise their production while at the same time maintain energy and resources efficient procedures. Overall IoT systems are set to reduce inefficiencies, risks and overall cost and provide an unparallel ease of connectivity that stakeholders can exploit for decision-making.

This paper presents the masTERs course on smArt Agriculture TECHnologies (TERRATECH) Erasmus+ project which aims at developing an advanced interactive MSc course related to Agriculture IoT Engineering that will train individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge to work in the rising “Smart Agriculture” industry. The course is designed to follow the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) credit standards for certification recognition across the EU. This postgraduate course is also formulated to stimulate transversal competences, such as the increased sense of initiative and entrepreneurship.

2 Significance of IoT in the Agricultural Sector

Today, there is clear evidence that ICT solutions can play a critical role in enabling companies and farmers worldwide to optimise their production, reduce the operating costs, while protecting the environment and increasingly sustainable use of natural resources. Penetration of relevant solutions to the market has been progressively increasing (mostly in smart metering solutions); creating huge opportunities but also significant threats to the stakeholders in the agricultural industry that still follow traditional techniques. Among those most severely impacted, by the advent of such solutions, are the agricultural producers who are facing a new business reality. This reality dictates that the majority of farmers, especially operating in Southern Europe, are likely to have near zero tertiary education and they have to learn to use highly sophisticated ICT solutions in order to be competitive in the near future. In contrast, engineers with expertise in ICT solutions have in general near zero understanding on agronomy in order to cater these needs. To sustain growth, improve competitiveness and drive business value, the industry must transform and take advantage of business opportunities that arise arising from using adoption of IoT-based solutions.

At EU level, the European Commission in February 2020 has defined its vision for EU digital transformation to achieve an inclusive use of technology that works for people and respects the core values of the EU [6]. The White Paper on Artificial Intelligence [7] and the European Data Strategy [8] are, in fact, the first two pillars of the Commission’s new digital strategy [9, 10].

Furthermore, as highlighted by Araujo et al. [11], Agriculture 4.0, part of EU Green Deal Program, is playing a central role in shaping the future of the agri-food sector, by having the three main dimensions of sustainability as pillars. These aim at providing economic, social, and environmental benefits, in an ethical and fair manner. In terms of economic benefits, Agriculture 4.0 involves applying modern technologies to generate data and use them for real-time processing, analysis, and decision-making purposes.

Farming applications supported by sophisticated ICT solutions and intelligent controls can effectively alter the traditional agronomic practices used so far and empower users to achieve significant benefits through increased yield, lower the costs, strive for environmental protection, and ignite entrepreneurship. Different benefits arising from the use of agricultural IoT are further described in the case studies below:

  • A case study by Libelium [12] showed an 18% increase in milk production by changing the feeding pattern of cows as based on monitoring of environmental conditions. This was a custom solution based on COTS products applied in a new market;

  • Facing the farmers’ need to measure water consumption at the farms scale, Knode [13] was launched as a high technology start-up providing solutions for collecting, storing, and analysing asset and resource data on farms.

  • Kurt Bantle [14], a retired engineer and now farmer, used IoT to reduce the water consumption in his avocado farm by 75%.

  • The use of remote and proximal sensing solutions to create a heat/vegetation map allowing the user to activate the irrigation system [15] or performing more efficient variable rate fertilization [16].

  • IoT solutions for early pest detection can reduce yield loss by up to 20–40% [17]; likewise, other IoT-based solutions allowed more efficient plant protection leading to similar productivity with 40–50% less spray [18].

Since there is no EU-wide formal agricultural training at a MSc level, in all cases the engineers have to comprehend in depth the farmers’ needs in order to be able to provide effective and problem-based solutions; contrariwise, farmers and agronomists have to invest in understanding and growing their knowledge on IoT. IoT and the digitalization of agricultural processes, tools and business will influence agricultural related personnel as they will need to have either an insight of the systems capabilities for corporate decisions, design/service this ecosystem or process/analyse the acquired data.

We investigated across Europe through our partner’s network, to a sample of 100 farmers that were asked to share their views on this rapidly emerging new technology and the results are:

  • The vast majority (90%) prefer to examine optimising their production using IoT as opposed to traditional techniques;

  • the preferred system to achieve the goal was: software for production optimisation (32%), sensing and monitoring (23%), automation and control (21%), smart greenhouse hardware (15%), livestock monitoring (9%);

  • only 1 out of 10 had any knowledge in using any type of IoT systems and none on designing or installing it.

Similar were the responses from a questionnaire developed under the SMARTAKIS Horizon2020 project (Grant Agreement 696294) on the interest and adaptation of smart farming technologies [19]. Plus, a recent survey carried out in the scope of DEMETER Horizon2020 project, which involved 484 farmers from around the globe, revealed that farmers were generally aware of the benefits associated with smart farming. According to this survey, the biggest drivers to farmers using smart farming technologies were [20]:

  • To provide information to better manage the farm.

  • To simplify work.

  • To improve environmental impact.

  • To increase profitability.

In addition, 14% and 13% of the farmers that replied to DEMETER’s questionnaire stated that the main reasons preventing them from adopting these technologies were the fact that they did not possess enough skills and that the technologies were too complex, respectively [20].

The TERRATECH project team identified that at least 21 occupations within the engineering and agricultural sector requiring knowledge on IoT solutions, at various levels as reported in Table 1.

Table 1. IoT influence on agricultural positions.
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Table 1 lists job responsibilities in the agricultural sector that require upskilling to integrate the new advances on farming, crop-related technologies, and their benefits. Occupations affected by the growth of IoT technologies will be requested by farmers, food industries, equipment manufacturers, as well as by thousands of private companies dealing with agricultural productions. In fact, some of the listed positions were already identified by SFATE Erasmus+ Project as new job opportunities that would arise from the adoption of smart farming technologies [21].

The authors’ own desk-research and educational networks revealed that hands-on IoT courses dedicated to the application of these systems to the Farming industry are still rare in the currently 137 Agriculture educational institutions inside the EU. Some engineering educational institutions mainly in Northern Europe have begun offering general ICT/IoT courses or Precision Agriculture courses of a few days duration, that are unable to convey solutions to practical and technical problems that are faced within the farming industry and do not offer a hands-on training on agricultural related companies and farms, at least not on a European scale.

Our mission is to provide a novel academic program in the theme of Agriculture IoT systems and land-based infrastructure that includes interactive teaching methods and partnerships with major educational and industrial organizations, giving students a solid grounding for starting a fruitful career in the corresponding industry or enable professionals to gain extra skills and knowledge and at the same time prompting local communities and authorities to embrace the new technologies and their benefits. Hence, the output of the partnership is to design a Master program providing additional skills to those interested in an agricultural career and allow the partners to create an ongoing course that will be implemented beyond the duration of this project. Table 2 shows the project partnership per organization type.

Table 2. Partners in the TERRATECH consortium.
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The consortium gathers 6 Universities (DEB, IHU, UCSC, UPorto, UPF, VIA) from 6 European Union countries (Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Spain), 1 SME for technology solutions from Bulgaria (CT), 1 SME for the MSc course certification (ECQA – Austria), 1 research centre from Greece (MAICh) and 4 other partners: 1 olive tree and vineyard farm (KF – Greece), 1 farming cooperation (CO – France) 1 communication company specialized in IT solutions and e-learning (EA – Spain), and 2 SMEs specialist in Geospatial technology and IoT solutions (AW – Netherlands and AGP – Portugal) to act as end-users/industrial partners for hosting the students for their practice and also for providing knowledge and market insight. All organizations have long-standing, established experience in their field. In addition, the consortium comprised from individuals that have a vast experience in EU projects, research and technology diffusion.

3 Curriculum Design

The main activity of the project is the development and execution of the academic curriculum. Based on the needs at European level and the technology trend IoT, the latter is composed of twenty-four (24) courses appropriately divided into two semesters. The course titles are listed in Table 3. Both time periods include, besides the courses, two university visits for the students, one at the International Hellenic University, Greece and one at the University of Debrecen in Hungary. The curriculum focuses on applied engineering concepts and provides industry insights in order to immerse the students in Agriculture ICT core components, functionality, maintenance, safety & sustainability. Two of the courses are characterised as large experiments that will lead to the development of drones, sensor clusters & IoT/Virtual Reality (VR) based measurement system. These subjects will be taught in person during the university visits and will include lab/practice work. Half of these subjects will be taught via blended classroom, where the DEB/IHU lecturers will co-teach with lecturers from partners (UPorto, CT, UPF, UCSC, VIA, MAICh, ECQA), which are experts in the respective subjects. The other half of these subjects will be taught remotely by the respective partners.

Table 3. TERRATECH academic curriculum structure.
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The TERRATECH curriculum is innovative also in the fact that it encompasses interactive teaching methods and partnerships with expert academic and farmers organizations to give to the students a solid background for starting a fruitful career in the industry. For example, the knowledge centres cooperate with business partners for the development of joint laboratory demonstrator exercises using CoSpectroCam sensor [22] developed by AW in three courses (Data Acquisition & Sensors, Agricultural Drone Systems, IoT Platforms & Systems). The duration of the MSc program is nine months. During the execution of the program, three mobility periods are programmed. For the first two periods (duration: 14 days) the students and two educators from one university will travel to the other, and vice-versa, to participate in large-scale laboratories. The third period (duration: 1 month) is reserved for an industrial placement, an agronomic on-the-job experience. Students will produce a report during the placement.

Although the postgraduate will be taught in English, local language lessons (in Hungarian and Greek) will be provided to enable the participants to immerge in the local culture during the exchange periods. The master’s degree will be open for participation for anyone with a basic agronomic, electrical or mechanical engineering, or physics background. Priority will be given according to their academic performance.

4 Conclusion and Outlook

The Industry 4.0 revolution is bringing to our everyday lives the concept of creating networks of smart interconnected objects via the IoT, with direct applications in almost all major sectors, including the agricultural one. Confronted with hard-to-face challenges associated with socioeconomic, economic, and climatic crises, the latter is increasingly adopting the new sensing and data exchange technologies, placing them ahead in the transition towards ICT and IoT adaptation. This market will rapidly require skilled individuals to design, develop, install, service and maintain these new systems.

Building on the success of a similar initiative in the maritime domain [23], the objective of the TERRATECH Joint Master’s Degree in Agriculture ICT/IoT systems presented here is to facilitate the qualification of current and future workforce in IoT-enabled agrotechnology and processes, both in initial and continuous education and training. The rapid market growth will demand that this postgraduate program will become an integral part of academic institutions and agriculture academies in Europe and beyond.

The first edition of the program (pilot program) will be financed by the European Commission. Financial sustainability of subsequent editions will be ensured by collecting student fees and through the scholarships that industrial companies will offer to train their personnel and stay competitive in this emerging field. The fees will cover the participant’s training, laboratory apparatus and demonstrator equipment maintenance. It will also cover the student’s mobility between academic institutions and to the industrial partners for their practice. Furthermore, the objective is to create a synergetic partnership with agriculture industry key players for co-financing the education program. Their return on invest will be clearly visible and measurable in terms of highly qualified students and professionals that can significantly help drive digitalization forward in the agriculture sector.

At this stage, the training modules and platform are being set up. The first deployment cycle will start in autumn 2022, allowing the consortium to have an initial basis for validation and improvement.

5 Relationship with the SPI Manifesto

Europe-wide qualification and certification of modern, digital skills has been one of the backbones of EuroAsiaSPI2 ever since its creation. In particular, the integration of diverse competences in product, services, and systems design has been identified as a key principle and success factor [24,25,26]. The SPI manifesto [27, 28] created in this community defines the values and principles required to deploy SPI efficiently and effectively.

The principle “Create a learning organization” means that organizations need to continuously qualify and re-qualify personnel to strengthen and re-new core competences in rapidly evolving contexts of the digital era. While agriculture has net ben a domain EuroSPI has been focussing on so far, the increasing predominance of digital technologies to face difficult challenges such as climate change and workforce depletion makes this domain particularly interesting and challenging for the SPI community.