The 7th Agritech Day was held last Thurs­day, Octo­ber 24, 2024 at UTC. This inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on tech­nolo­gies and solu­tions for effi­cient, sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture attract­ed 220 par­tic­i­pants and experts from all over the world.

Agritech Day, orga­nized by Axe­ma and UTC, brings togeth­er indus­try experts, aca­d­e­mics and researchers from around the world to share their exper­tise on recent inno­va­tions in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. The aim is to explore the lat­est tech­nolo­gies in intel­li­gent agri­cul­ture and push back the fron­tiers of agri­cul­tur­al robot­ics. As the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor moves towards more sus­tain­able prac­tices, decar­boniz­ing farm equip­ment is a cru­cial step. This year’s Agritech Day fea­tured a num­ber of pre­sen­ta­tions, includ­ing one on the dig­i­tal sim­u­la­tion mod­el of a mul­ti-pur­pose agri­cul­tur­al trac­tor. Antti Lajunen from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Helsin­ki pre­sent­ed an advanced sim­u­la­tion mod­el for eval­u­at­ing alter­na­tive, envi­ron­ment-friend­ly pow­er-trains. Math­ieu Beau­rain from CETIM talked about design and devel­op­ment meth­ods for elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered machines. François Brochard from In Situ talked about mod­ern­iz­ing tra­di­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al equip­ment with elec­tric solu­tions. He also dis­cussed cut­ting-edge advances in sen­sors and detec­tion sys­tems. Clé­ment Moignard from INRAE and Philippe Bon­net from Sec­om Engi­neer­ing unveiled their lat­est research on safe­ty sys­tems, cru­cial for the safe deploy­ment of autonomous machines in agri­cul­ture. “There are many very inter­est­ing top­ics indeed, such as safe­ty at work, pre­ven­tion and ergonom­ics. As coor­ga­niz­ers of this con­fer­ence, we are also involved as “bio­mech­anists”. Our human-cen­tred approach aims to devel­op solu­tions that are durable, reli­able and safe for users. Agri­cul­ture, an inte­gral part of human exis­tence, is a per­fect illus­tra­tion of our com­mit­ment to the well-being of peo­ple in their work­ing envi­ron­ment,” empha­sizes Dr Khalil Ben Man­sour, with his PhD in bio­me­chan­ics at UTC, in charge of a research project on the bio­me­chan­i­cal analy­sis of movement.

A greener, more technologically advanced agricultural future

These expert pre­sen­ta­tions not only served to high­light cur­rent inno­va­tions, but also chart­ed the course for future progress in reduc­ing the car­bon foot­print of agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery and improv­ing pre­ci­sion farm­ing with sophis­ti­cat­ed sen­sors. Johan Mauny from Sec­om Engi­neer­ing, for exam­ple, pre­sent­ed his advanced col­li­sion­free tra­jec­to­ry plan­ner for com­plex agro­nom­ic tasks in rela­tion to fields with per­ma­nent crops. Lionel Léveil­lé from Sky Agri­cul­ture and Hon­oré Bac­quenois from Naïo Tech­nolo­gies dis­cussed their col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts to inte­grate robot­ics into field crop man­age­ment, improv­ing effi­cien­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. For her part, Dr Ikram Abd­out­tal­ib, PhD in Agri­cul­tur­al Eco­nom­ics, Head of Fore­sight and Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment at Axe­ma, addressed the issue of sus­tain­able cir­cu­lar agri­cul­ture. “In 2019, agri­cul­ture account­ed for 19% of green­house gas emis­sions in France. The agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery sec­tor accounts for 2.3% of these emis­sions in France and 1% in Europe. The aim is to reduce emis­sions by 18% by 2030 and 46% by 2050. Over the past 50 years, farms have evolved and will con­tin­ue to do so in the future. In 1970, there were 1.6 mil­lion farms. There was a marked drop in the 1980s with the inten­si­fi­ca­tion and con­cen­tra­tion of farms. In 2050, pro­jec­tions show 240,000 farms with 800 000 trac­tors still run­ning on non-road diesel. We’ll be talk­ing about three mil­lion tonnes of CO2 emis­sions. The planned tran­si­tion will come with a cost. Who will bear it? Will it be the farm­ers, or the States, which will have to renew part of the fleet? Remem­ber that the aver­age age of a trac­tor is 28 years, that of a com­bined har­vester 25 years. UTC stu­dents were also present at the con­fer­ences, well aware of the chal­lenges fac­ing the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in the future, and which these future engi­neers intend to tackle.

DataXChange and TIM technology

Dur­ing the Smart Farm­ing ses­sions in the after­noon, the audi­ence lis­tened to dis­cus­sions on the inte­gra­tion of sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­nolo­gies in agri­cul­ture, focus­ing on decen­tral­ized and cen­tral­ized tech­nolo­gies com­bined in a sin­gle “DataX­Change” sys­tem. Sébastien Schroed­er from Kuhn Group unveiled this uni­fied sys­tem that inte­grates decen­tral­ized and cen­tral­ized tech­nolo­gies, improv­ing data exchange and deci­sion-mak­ing process­es in agri­cul­tur­al oper­a­tions. Ful­vio Zerbino of Kub­o­ta in Europe dis­cussed advances in TIM (Trac­tor Imple­ment Man­age­ment) tech­nol­o­gy, which pave the way for autonomous manure spread­ing, improv­ing the effi­cien­cy and pre­ci­sion of field appli­ca­tions. These dis­cus­sions pro­vid­ed a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how tech­nol­o­gy can stream­line farm­ing prac­tices and increase efficiency.

KD