Newsletter #7 – December 2024
Year End Edition – A word from our Chairs
Dear Readers,
Wow, what an eventful year! How far have we made it as the AgriGuide Family? We started 2024 with no label digitised and a data model in its infancy, being in a position where we had to push for our ideas and vision. In May, we got sight of the first legislative proposal, turning our Release 1 into a necessity for European Growers and dramatically shifting our delivery plans to be ready one year earlier than intended. We are deeply impressed by the capabilities of our wonderful team to deal with such change, being adaptable, agile and showing unprecedented resilience! The AgriGuide working pillars have made great progress on all aspects of our initiative, such as building alliances and positioning AgriGuide as a solution recognised and actively supported by key stakeholders. Our app holds 220 labels + by now (and increasing) with a stable data model, driving a growing level of confidence. Our communication capabilities professionalised at speed, delivering key messages e.g. via our video and website.
We can not thank enough the AgriGuide Pilot countries for their endurance, patience and dedication as role models. At times it has been a challenging journey but look what we’ve achieved. Without you and your constant push for excellence we would not be where we are today!
We also do not want to forget our third-party vendors, whom we could trust throughout this adventure together. Thanks for sticking with us, providing external views, and being so pivotal in delivering AgriGuide.
We have a great, dedicated team that is driven by a joint vision. Together, we are creating a paradigm shift in how Plant Protection Products are used throughout the EU27. We feel privileged, proud, and energised by you guys!
We wish you great holidays, Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Come back fresh and relaxed in 2025 – the journey goes on!
Martyn & Dominic
Inviting all EU 27 countries!
After a successful pilot phase in Romania, Italy, and Germany, the AgriGuide project will launch a new phase in 2025 and extend to the remaining 24 EU countries.
Our AgriGuide team is coordinating to ensure country preparation and rollout. National crop protection associations and local company experts will organise country working groups, supported by onboarding dedicated tools. As the “CLE AgriGuide Transformation Office team,” we are thrilled to go beyond the 3 pilot countries!
We’ve been attending some key conferences!
The team has been busy with promoting AgriGuide at various conferences, and the interest keeps growing!
European Farmers Congress
Bucharest, October 23-25, 2024
CropLife Europe sponsored and participated in the 11th European Farmers Congress organized by COPA and COGECA which was held in Bucharest, Romania from 23-25 October 2024. A stand promoting AgriGuide was set up in the lobby in front of the meeting room with CropLife Europe and AIPROM colleagues on site to present AgriGuide and answer questions from Congress participants about the project.
During the main plenary session of the Congress, CropLife Europe’s Director-General Olivier de Matos spoke on the panel and highlighted the importance of innovative tools such as AgriGuide in the transition towards a more sustainable food production system and the potential of such tools to reduce the administrative burden for farmers, a key point that was brought up throughout the discussions.
VII Foro Datagri
Madrid, November 13-14, 2024
On 14th November 2024, Georgiana Hayes represented CropLife Europe at the VII Foro Datagri as a panelist on the topic of traceability.
The discussion explored how robust traceability systems can empower consumers with transparent information about product origins, including the safe use of plant protection products, fostering trust from farm to fork.
It was an ideal stage to talk about AgriGuide and its contributing role in this complex value chain to ensure sustainable farming practices.
Many thanks to Foro Datagri for organizing such an insightful event and to Hispatec – Agrointeligencia for inviting us to participate.
Our attendance at conferences continues!
BVL Quo vadis Pflanzenschutzmittel-Zulassung?
Braunschweig, November 18-19, 2024
On 18th & 19th November 2024, the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety hosted a two-day event addressing the question “Quo vadis crop protection authorisation?”. Besides practical reports emphasising the need for a diverse portfolio of active substances and the perspective of national and EU regulatory bodies on the current authorisation process, Frederike Zeibig presented AgriGuide as a digital solution for safer risk management. The digital label enables a timely update of the adjusted directions for use that the farmer can easily access via the AgriGuide web or mobile app, thus ensuring compliant crop protection applications. Further, feedback from the growers from the Pilot phase in Germany was presented, where the testers highlighted the standardised structure of the label in the app, making it easy to access relevant information. The presentation was well perceived, and the role of the digital, machine-readable label as part of future risk management was highlighted.
EU Agri Food Days
Brussels, December 10-12, 2024
We are happy to report that CropLife Europe’s AgriGuide project was selected as one of the exhibitors at this year’s DG AGRI EU Agri-Food Days that took place from 10-12 December in Brussels. The “Digital Day’ took place on the 12th of December, and our AgriGuide stand was placed in front of the plenary with members of the AgriGuide Subteam on site to answer numerous questions concerning the project, including from representatives of the European Commission. For this event, the AgriGuide team developed actual labels for 1 litre PPP packaging that was able to provide curious participants with a very realistic version of how AgriGuide can work in practice.
Technical Reflection on 2024
As we reach the end of 2024 it’s useful to be able to look back at the year, pick out the high points, reflect on the challenges, and look ahead to the ambitions for 2025.
2024 Q1 – foundation & PoC
In January, when we started the year, we were lucky to have an engaged project team, some detailed achievements under our belt with the third iteration of our label data model, and an AgriGuide platform that was starting to take shape. But it was still very early days! If AgriGuide was a building project we had barely broken ground to start making the foundations. Just over a month later we ran our short ‘Proof of Concept’ phase (PoC) with an early version of the app and platform, a handful of labels and some brief instructions for our testers. We learned a lot, including how hard it is to digitise labels when your platform is still being built!
2024 Q2 – early Pilot
Following the PoC, we adapted our plans for the early pilot phase to give the teams a chance to fit the pieces together and check the details of how they fit. Model structure, label data, reference terms and platform all had to match, or match well enough to allow the project to bring a wider group in to view the work, to comment on it and provide more valuable feedback. Back to our building analogy, we were out of the ground, with not too many pieces needing ‘encouragement’ to line up and fit together. The richer feedback helped us identify key revisions to the label data model to mature it to handle most of the product labels we could see ahead of us in 2024 and beyond. The process we used to update the model drew on the previous cycles, with additional steps to make it more robust. Our operations were beginning to mature.
2024 Q3 – model v1.0 and scale-out planning
Small changes to the foundation of a building can make a big difference to the structure and operation of it. And so it is with AgriGuide’s label data model. Although the number of changes was relatively small, those changes had consequences that have taken several months to understand and get on top of. However, in Q3, the technical team needed to spend time planning for an accelerated scale-out across the remaining EU27 countries – adding 24 to the 3 pilot countries. We spent a couple of days together to draft a first plan and found some key ways to constrain our scope to make the scale-out plans achievable. The support from the CLE Board for the AgriGuide 2025 plans gave the project a real lift.
2024 Q4 – learning to communicate better
And then, in October, we hit one of those project moments that is both a huge challenge and a real chance to learn. Part of the wider project team identified difficulties viewing some of their label information in the app. There were genuine issues because the app was still being revised from the early Pilot label rendering. But it was a chance to dig into how different parts of the project were working and how we all communicated. We have seen great examples of open, two-way discussion develop where previously we had mostly one-way comms. Borrowing from the ‘quantum’ event we saw at our second planning session in December, we’ve been able to mature our digital supply chain and our ways of working. As the aphorism has it “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We’ve been learning how to communicate, so we can do this together. Because we want to go far.
We end 2024 having learned that we can tackle big challenges together, thanks to the hard work of the whole project.
AgriGuide: What’s Next
