Smart Sustainable Farming Research Program
The Smart Sustainable Farming Research Program aims to contribute to sustainable, innovative and competitive agricultural production and increase transparency from agricultural production to consumers.
With this initiative, fenaco is supporting the establishment of the Smart Sustainable Farming Research Cluster at the World Food System Center with a total of 1.2 million Swiss Francs over the next six years, thus enabling several interdisciplinary projects at the interface of agriculture, sustainable production systems, robotics and artificial intelligence. With this support, five to six projects are to be realized in a first phase. In the future, other industry partners may also participate in the research initiative.
A call for proposals for the program is closed.
All projects based on an interdisciplinary research approach that address one or more of the following focus topics are invited to submit projects:
• Reducing the footprint of agricultural production
• Strengthening the quality of products and improving transparency along the production process
• Improving the competitiveness of sustainably-produced products
• Strengthening biodiversity
• Reduction of the climate impact of production and strengthening the resilience of agricultural production to climate change.
We also welcome projects that are thematically or methodologically linked or build on the ongoing research within the program.
Maximum funding for each project is set at 200,000 CHF each. Direct funding is restricted to ETH Zurich World Food System Center members. The maximum funding duration per project is 3-4 years for doctoral students and two years for postdoctoral researchers.
And thanks to all who joined us at our Ideation Workshop with Center staff and fenaco representatives.
Funded Projects
The predictive power of smartphone imaging to increase sustainability of crop production
Postdoctoral Researcher: Dr. Lukas Roth, Crop Science, ETH Zurich
Principal Investigators: Prof. Achim Walter, Crop Science, ETH Zurich; Prof. Ce Zhang, Computer Science at the DS3Lab, ETH Zurich
The project focuses on the use of smartphone imaging to increase sustainability of crop production. Management decisions in crop fields are based on both crop and field traits. The goal of the new project will be to improve decision support of farmers, based on high-quality visual representations of the past, current and projected future status of the crop field. By collecting smartphone images of crop fields at points in time, field visualizations will be created using a combination of machine learning, crop growth models and visualisation technologies. Farmers could then receive visual renditions of the past and near-future development of their crops.
The core outcome is to improve decision support for farmers. Also, the visualizations can demonstrate to interested researchers and citizen scientists how crops develop in the field and how this can be adjusted via management.
News
April 2025: First results show potential of drone-based eDNA analysis approach for early detection of invasive species in viticulture. News item
January 2024: New ways to measure nitrous oxide emissions from soils as well as detect invasive pests in vineyards are the foci of two new interdisciplinary projects starting in 2024. News item
July 2022: Smartphone imaging to increase sustainability of crop production: A newly funded interdisciplinary project will focus on using smartphone images of fields to create visualizations of past and future crop development. News item
October 2021: World Food System Center of ETH Zurich and fenaco launch research collaboration in the field of smart sustainable farming. News item
