• Rural Digital Europe
• 11. Sustainability close

The aim of this paper was to show the role and importance of agricultural advisers in the development and implementation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in a path to the more sustainable agriculture, and achieving the SDG2 Zero Hunger of the UN 2030 Agenda. There are a lot of challenges in the efforts to develop so-called "hi-tech agriculture" and smart farming in the Republic of Serbia. This research is conducted on the territory of the Nisava district in three municipalities: Merošina, Gadžin Han and Niš. The obtained data were statistically processed and presented through tables and charts. Agricultural advisors play an important role in the digital literacy of agricultural producers on their pace to implement in practice principles of hi-tech agriculture. The most important is the funding of permanent education of advisers, as well agricultural producers to acquire the state of art knowledge and experience needed to become more competitive in the EU and global market.

This chapter introduces a study of the fog computing suitability assessment as a solution for the increasing demand for IoT devices. In particular, we focus on energy consumption and quality of service as two important metrics of the performance of the fog. Therefore, we present a modeling of these two metrics in the fog. Then, we express the problem as constrained optimization and solve it efficiently using evolutionary algorithms. Our approach stands out as an energy efficient solution and there are many techniques available for precision agriculture to monitor and control the environment for the growth of many crops. Due to unequal distribution of rain water, it is very difficult for the farmer to manage the distribution of water equally to all the crops in the whole farm. It requires an irrigation method suitable for any weather condition, soil type, and variety of crops. Greenhouses are the best solution to control and manage these problems. It is important to find a method that gives perfect analysis and control to develop proper environment. Large areas covered by a sensor network can establish a greenhouse with the precision environment required for different crops. This environment builds up by using two technologies: IT and cloud computing. By using IoT (Internet of Things) we can control devices or any environmental needs anytime, anywhere and the cloud which provides storage and computing resources. Green building plays an important role in the development of the construction industry. The key issue of green building is how to operate it. This chapter presents a building management cloud platform for green buildings. Its goal is to realize building operation management by using the technologies of cloud computing and Internet of Things. The cloud servers provide data storage, computing, and hosting. The software takes responsibility for visualization interfaces and modularization services. The hardware development makes devices and things to connect the network. Many functions, such as monitoring, controlling, data processing, management, and services customization, have been integrated in the building management cloud platform.

The growing demand of food resources, the rise of energy prices, and the climate changes have been recognized among the main causes of the food crisis that is recently affecting the whole planet [1]. In the framework of industrial agriculture, the dramatic increase of food prices brings back to mind the problem of the intensive exploitation of the natural resources. In order to define a suitable model of sustainable agriculture aimed at preserving the environment and the communities of the farmers as well as at enhancing the productivity, a modern approach consists into the exploitation of technologies and techniques for achieving, in production, economies of scale.

The development of biodiversity-friendly agricultural landscapes is of major importance to meet the sustainable development challenges of our time. The emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), i.e. drones, has opened a new set of research and management opportunities to achieve this goal. On the one hand, this review summarizes UAV applications in agricultural landscapes, focusing on biodiversity conservation and agricultural land monitoring, based on a systematic review of the literature that resulted in 550 studies. Additionally, the review proposes how to integrate UAV research in these fields and point to new potential applications that may contribute to biodiversity-friendly agricultural landscapes. UAV-based imagery can be used to identify and monitor plants, floral resources and animals, facilitating the detection of quality habitats with high prediction power. Through vegetation indices derived from their sensors, UAVs can estimate biomass, monitor crop plant health and stress, detect pest or pathogen infestations, monitor soil fertility and target patches of high weed or invasive plant pressure, allowing precise management practices and reduced agrochemical input. Thereby, UAVs are helping to design biodiversity-friendly agricultural landscapes and to mitigate yield-biodiversity trade-offs. In conclusion, UAV applications have become a major means of biodiversity conservation and biodiversity-friendly management in agriculture, while latest developments, such as the miniaturization and decreasing costs of hyperspectral sensors, promise many new applications for the future.

Digital technologies are often seen as an opportunity to enable sustainable futures in agriculture and rural areas. However, this digital transformation process is not inherently good as it impacts on many aspects (e.g. economic, environmental, social, technological, institutional) and their relations. The Responsible Research and Innovation approach calls for a better understanding and anticipation of the often unknown impacts. To meet this aim we have developed a framework that allows to gain insight on the relations between the social, the cyber and the physical, i.e. a Socio-Cyber-Physical System and have described conditions for a successful digital transformation of such a system. These are design of, and creating access to digital technologies, and navigating system complexity. This framework allows for a better problematisation of digital transformation and has been illustrated through an example of digital dairy farming. It supports an enhanced understanding of moral responsibilities regarding digital transformation, fitting within the Responsible Research and Innovation approach, as well as the succinct step of understanding who is responsible or accountable for the identified (positive or negative) impacts, i.e. responsibilisation.