AgriGuide Newsletter #10 – June-July 2025
Passing the Torch: Leadership Transition at AgriGuide
We are pleased to announce a leadership transition at AgriGuide, as Georgiana Hayes steps into the role of Chair, succeeding Dominic Widmer, who is returning to focus fully on his broader responsibilities within the Syngenta Group.
A Message from Dominic
“After several rewarding years leading AgriGuide, I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made in developing a digital platform that empowers farmers across Europe. What started as a share dvision has grown into a practical solution that simplifies regulatory compliance and supports sustainable agriculture. The plans ahead for AgriGuide are truly exciting and will create a paradigm shift in the use of Plant Protection Products acrossEurope.Our greatest strengths have always been the people involved (thank you,Team!),andGeorgiana, who supported me asVice-Chair and has played a pivotal role, is perfectly placed to lead AgriGuide into its next chapter. AgriGuide will continue to be a trailblazer for innovative Agriculture!.”
A Message from Georgiana
“It’s a true honour to step into the role of Chair and build on the solid foundation that Dominic has established. Having been involved withAgriGuide as a representative of a member company and now fully dedicated to the project through CropLife Europe , I’ve had the privilege of seeing its evolution up close. I continue to be inspired by the incredible team behind AgriGuide and our partners across Europe. Together, we will continue to deliver smart, user-friendly tools that support farmers in adopting safe and sustainable practices.”
We thank Dominic for his outstanding contribution and welcome Georgiana as she takes the helm to lead AgriGuide into its next stage of growth and innovation.
Charting the Path Ahead
Brussels Meeting Recap: Steering AgriGuide Towards a Promising Future
From 24th to 26th June, key members of the AgriGuide project convened in Brussels for a pivotal three-day meeting addressing crucial aspects of the platform’s development and future direction.
The first day the AgriGuide team joined forces with COPA-COGECA to explore strategies for increasing farmer adoption of the platform, affirming the vital importance of our close collaboration.
Day two focused on digital agricultural policy and precision farming, with AgriGuide presented as a future-proof tool for promoting the responsible use of plant protection products.
On 26th June, the AgriGuide sub-team convened for a comprehensive full-day meeting to conduct mid-year health checks across work packages 1 and 1.5, establish detailed go- live criteria for 2026 deployment, and review work package 2 progress. The session also addressed potential routes for farm management system partnerships, cross-work package collaboration requirements, and strategic resource allocation to ensure successful project delivery.
Overall, the Brussels meeting was a productive milestone for AgriGuide, reinforcing our commitment to innovation, collaboration and continuous improvement.
Meet the Team!
A new section to our newsletter to get introduced to the people who are part of our AgriGuide Project sub-team.
Hello from Laure de Bastard!
Here are five questions we asked Laure to get to know her a little better
1. What’s your role within AgriGuide?
I actually wear two hats in AgriGuide, through which I bridge the AgriGuide team at CropLife Europe and the ground-level implementation at Syngenta. At CropLife Europe, I’m involved in several working groups – regulatory, policy, transformation, and roll-out coordination – where I always try to bring in the real voices from the countries, whether that’s farmers’ experiences, stakeholder conversations, or digitalisation insights. On the Syngenta side, I represent the company on the AgriGuide Sub-Team, making sure the solution is shaped to meet our company’s needs.
2. What excites you most about your role?
I love complexity, so AgriGuide is right up my street! It’s actually the most complex project I’ve ever worked on. The scope is huge, with so many different stakeholders involved — from farmers out in the fields to regulatory authorities.
But that’s what makes it exciting: When AgriGuide reaches its full potential, it will truly revolutionise European farming. AgriGuide is a key stepping stone to the digital revolution in farming — or as the French say: la révolution del’agriculture numérique!
3. Fun fact about yourself?
I’ve been singing in a choir since I was four years old. It’s something close to my heart and a great way to switch off from work.
4. What is your hope for AgriGuide?
I see AgriGuide as the very heart of digital farming — the core that makes everything work for the farmer, from labels and compliance instructions to electronic records. My hope is that it becomes the ultimate connected source of truth and intelligence, linking everything together seamlessly: the spraying machines, the farmers, the authorities — everyone.
5. If there’s one tip you’d share for making AgriGuide a success, what would it be?
AgriGuide is a bit of a rollercoaster, with its ups and downs. So my advice? Don’t be afraid to keep going and don’t lose hope. You’ll discover new things along the way, and yes, it might not always work perfectly first time, and it might take some time. But as long as we don’t give up, it’ll all come together. For me, it’s like opening a new window in the house and suddenly seeing a whole new world outside.
From the Technical Corner
Data Model v1.1 released
AgriGuide has moved to a revised data model – we are now at v1.1. It includes a series of small but important technical adjustments, some additional property qualifiers, and a few key extensions. The items were all based on feedback gathered from pilot country label reviews and early feedback from additional countries as we scale-out across the rest of the EU27. A key aim of this model update was to keep the set of changes relatively small and to include app and documentation updates for a combined release. The digitisation team at Molecular Connections brought their platform up to a matching v1.1 a short time later. The smaller size worked well, and we’ll look to repeat this with our next update, likely early in 2026.
Successful digitisation webinar
In July we ran a webinar on digitisation, also covering a reminder of the AgriGuide milestones for 2025, some of the recent changes including those in v1.1, and particularly the underlying principles we use; machine readability being the most important for digitisation. There was excellent engagement from the 165 participants, which encourages us to plan for a few more sessions, including some basic project updates as well as deeper dives into specific areas of label digitisation.
Annotation exercises in full swing
As we described in the last newsletter, scaling out across all EU27 countries is being done in a standardised way, with phases from simple onboarding, first label annotation and digitisation, to a full set of reference labels as part of the minimum setup needed for a country to move to digitising its full portfolio. All scale-out country groups have reached or passed the first label kick-off session, several of the fourth and final country group already running annotation and digitisation review sessions as we write this in early August. Spain, France and Ireland were able to publish their first labels some weeks ago. And now Denmark, Croatia and Slovenia have all done the same.
AgriGuide at ECPA 2025
AgriGuide Showcased at Leading Precision Agriculture Conference
At the 15th European Conference on Precision Agriculture (ECPA 2025), held from 29th June to 3rd July in Barcelona, AgriGuide was proudly presented by our project co-chair Martyn Griffiths. The presentation attracted a diverse audience of stakeholders and was warmly received as an innovative initiative supporting the digitalisation of agriculture through the use of digital labels. With over 450 delegates from more than 40 countries in attendance, the conference provided an excellent platform to highlight the latest advancements in precision and digital agriculture, reinforcing AgriGuide’s role at the forefront of this rapidly evolving field.
Interested to learn more about the conference?
Please visit the website via this link: ECPA 2025
-ECPA 2025
Country Roll-Out
Solid Progress Across EU27
The AgriGuide project continues to advance steadily across nearly 27 EU countries, reaching key milestones in the digitisation journey of their product labels.
Key achievements over the past two months include:
- Pilot countries (Germany, Italy and Romania) continue to digitise their product portfolios.
- Countries such as France, Spain and Ireland have made significant progress through the various phases and are close to having an accurate platform in place.
- Several countries have successfully digitised and published their first label in the app (Denmark, Croatia and Slovenia), with others expected to follow shortly.
- All countries are advancing towards the launch of the agriguide.eu webpage in their local languages. More information to follow on this.
The progress across these diverse countries highlights the collaborative effort and commitment between all actors, driving AgriGuide forward. As more labels are digitised, reviewed and published, the project moves closer to its ambition set for 2025: to provide across the 27 EU countries a tool accurate and robust enough for companies to digitise their plant protection product portfolio for farmers.
What’s Next
Preparing for a Productive Autumn
As colleagues return from well-deserved summer holidays in August, we’re expecting a particularly busy and dynamic season ahead.
This autumn will feature crucial workshops with our collaborating partners, alongside a comprehensive full-day session in early October dedicated to the AgriGuide sub-team. This strategic workshop will thoroughly review our progress and ensure the remaining months of 2025 remain focused on delivering our planned goals and objectives, including our critical commitments to the board.
Join Us at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit
We’re delighted to announce that AgriGuide will be participating at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in London on 22-23 September 2025. If you’re attending, please drop by our booth and meet the fantastic team working on the project.
