Celebrating World Environment Day with STELAR: Valuing the Environment through Food Safety and Smart Agriculture
World Environment Day has been held annually on June 5 ever since 1973, bringing together people from over 150 countries who use the day to highlight the crucial need for environmental action. At STELAR, an EU-funded project, we’re delighted to take part in such an important date, especially since this year marks the event’s 50th anniversary!
Through the lifetime of the project and beyond, we plan on streamlining the processes of the fast-changing agrifood data space while contributing to the preservation of the environment.
STELAR’s Role in Environmentally-conscious Smart Agriculture
Food safety can have a tremendous impact on society and the market. According to the World Health Organization, diarrhoea most probably caused by waterborne diseases kills an estimated 2.2 million people each year, mostly children. Smart culture, on the other hand, can transform the environmental impact of traditional agriculture, given that it is currently responsible for around 10% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The STELAR project aims to design and develop an innovative Knowledge Lake Management System (KLMS) for automating the creation and management of FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) and AI-ready data.
In particular, STELAR will showcase the KLMS platform’s usability through three pilots which focus on food safety and smart agriculture, addressing questions of critical societal and economic significance.
Reducing the Environmental Footprint of Food Production
Sustainability performance of the agrifood sector is one of the key areas society needs to address going forward. One of the ways we’re moving towards resilient food systems is the conversion of the Farm Accountancy Data Network to the Farm Sustainability Data Network. That will lead to overcoming data gaps which occur when collecting statistics on agri-environmental indicators and the benchmarking of farm performance.
STELAR’s focus on providing FAIR data aims to impact this area. The pilots in the project will deal with data that can reduce the environmental footprint of food production. This is due to the data’s value in the overall food chain, and due to the impact of precision farming. The result will be timely and reliable large volumes of data for informing precision farming decisions.
Providing Stable Yields and Higher Food Security
The majority of farming decisions and actions such as fertilisation and plant protection measures are performed early in the season (until flowering). So it is of utmost importance, from an ecological perspective, to act in this period by providing precise recommendations for farming measures to those working on row crops in Europe.
STELAR’s KLMS will be used to collect and annotate Earth Observation data, as well as weather and other climate data to inform farmers and advisors of positive practices. This will effectively push crop development predictions much earlier in the season. Moreover, it will provide more stable yields and higher food security in times when precise input is needed for environmentally-friendly food production.
Celebrating World Environment Day Every Day!
The World Environment Day has been led and highlighted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) since its inception. At STELAR we are excited to mark the occasion and are dedicated to staying true to its principles – be it on June 5, or any other day of the year!
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