SUNSPACE (Sustainable development Smart Agriculture Capacity)
The SUNSPACE project is a is a Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices Capacity Building in the field of Higher Education supported by EU Erasmus+ programme. The aim of the project is to develop the capacity of the partner institutions on agriculture farming and technological innovation.
Farming is one of the important link in the food sector. Any failures in agricultural products cannot (or not easily) be eliminated by later stages of the chain. That why, this sector needs to be built on an appropriate organization and control of processes, and to provide assurance on the safety and quality of its products which consumers could trust. Smart farm is of foremost relevance for the sustainability of the farming sector in meeting this responsibility. This smart farming requires biotechnology, food standards, digital and sensing technologies.
It involves the incorporation of information and communication technologies into equipment and, for example, sensors (to follow temperature, humidity, light, and pressure etc.) and artificial intelligence for use in agricultural production systems, so implies the convergence between agricultural science and information science, which is not yet widespread. Small and medium sized farms, which build the majority of the global agricultural production, are traditionally slow in adopting the use of these innovative tools based on digital technologies for a number of reasons (e.g. not familiar with technologies, perception of an undesirable cost-benefit ratio, too much information provided without knowing what to do with it) (Bewley and Russell, 2010).
This finding is more true in some Asian countries where farmers have not learned how to earn more money by producing and marketing their produce in a better way. SUNSpaCe provides an Education and training System to help Farmers understand the use and usefulness of the new technologies. The overall objective of developing Smart Farm knowledge management system in Asia countries is to support the socio economic growth by strengthen Farmer in three target country: Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan. The common challenges of this three countries are: i) to get rid of their poverty as well as conservation of environment, ii) The Government of Bhutan aims to convert the whole agricultural area to Organic Agriculture (OA) by 2020. Thailand stablished a new strategies for developing Thailand’s organic agriculture industry.
A vision has been set to develop Thailand as a center for the production, trade, and consumption of organic agricultural products. Iii) In Nepal, many projects and programs are promoting climate-smart agriculture and become a big challenges to succeed.To meet the specific requirements defined in section E, knowledge and know-how in biotechnology especially bio extraction and bio-agriculture techniques are essential for replacement of chemical fertilizers, weed-killer, pesticide, hormone, enzyme and minerals. These challenges will be addressed in logical structure begging by the identification of the skill priorities and the requirement of smart farm, developing an appropriate adaptive learning approach for smart farmers and design 4 training programs and learning materials to be trained in local and regional target partners farm.