Les enjeux autour du numérique et de l'Agriculture - Véronique BELLON MAUREL

Bio : Véronique Bellon-Maurel is researcher at INRAE (UMR ITAP Laboratory) in Montpellier, France. She is an agricultural engineer specialized in optical sensors for agriculture. She has formally been professor at l’Institut Agro Montpellier, as well as director of Ecotechnology department of Irstea (now INRAE) and director deputy of the Mathnum department in INRAE. For the last 10 years, she specialized in digital agriculture dedicated to agroecology. She has been heading #DigitAg, the Digital Institute for Digital Agriculture since 2017 and she is also co-coordinating Occitanum, a Living-Lab dedicated to mobilizing digital technologies at the service of agriculture and the agroecological transition in Occitanie, a region in South of France. She is one of the five authors of the White Book “Agriculture and Digital Technologies”, jointly published by INRAE and INRIA in 2022. She is member of the Academy of Technologies. 

Description intervention : All over the world, agriculture is under pressure to change: climate change, changing consumer demand, the need to make farming practices greener, the development of digital technology as in other economic sectors. Numerous international agencies (FAO, World Bank, OECD, etc.) see digital technology as a lever for improving production and living conditions in agriculture and facilitating virtuous transitions. However, digital technology is also criticised for a number of risks (environmental footprint, difficulties of access, loss of autonomy). The challenge facing research is therefore to develop a responsible digital technology that serves the agro-ecological transition, in its broadest sense. The main challenges are: developing tools for the farm management, developing tools for collective management at the territorial scale, developing tools for a better inclusion in supply chains and understanding and optimizing data and knowledge management in the agricultural ecosystem. To achieve this, interdisciplinary research is essential, and this is the aim of the Convergence #DigitAg institute, which since 2016 has brought together more than 600 researchers from three scientific communities in Montpellier (Rennes and Toulouse): digital sciences, agronomy and human, economic, social and management sciences.