 First of all, you're all welcome. Thank you for coming. We have here Dr. Vladimir Susha, who's the Director General of the Joint Research Centre of the European Union, of the European Commission on Other. And he's here to talk to us about what they're doing and looking into the future. So we're very grateful. And what we'll do, we can start. Just to say the address that Dr. Susha is on the record, but the discussion afterwards is under chat-and-house rules which is that you can say what you like and it won't be attributed to you or to any organisation. But it can be, the information can be used. So that's it. I just want to remind everybody if you have a phone to either push it on silent or turn it off and do that with a kickoff. We hope to finish in around two o'clock at least now. Okay? Go ahead. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm very happy to be here, privileged. I'll be telling you first maybe a few words about the organisation which is the European Commission on Science and Knowledge Service called Joint Research Centre. And I will probably start with introducing this organisation in a few words. So as the title says, we are Scientific and Knowledge Service. So then our mission is to provide cutting-edge knowledge, scientific knowledge for policymaking of the European Union in the entire policy cycle. So then we are working at the beginning before the legislation or policy is designed. Then we are accompanying the Commission in the process of negotiations, the legislative process in the European Parliament and Council. We are providing additional information. And then we are actually working quite a lot and it represents 70% of our activities roughly. We are working in implementation. And in implementation very often we are working with Member States because you know that this is the role of Member State to implement the legislation. So then we are working very often with different national authorities, standardisation bodies, et cetera, in this respect. So we have roughly 3,000 people. We have the headquarters in Brussels, but that's the small part of the organisation. And we have campuses with the labs because we do a lot of laboratory work. We do the measurement. We provide different standard reference materials. Actually we are together with US NIST, National Institute for Standards and Technologies. We are together the biggest producer of reference materials in the world. So then very often if you do a certain analysis, this reference material is coming from us or it's coming from NIST in the US. But we do it only in very complicated cases where there is no business model because standard reference materials can be produced by private sector, but in some cases it's not profitable. And it's for example nuclear, nuclear security, nuclear safeguards. Nobody is interested because this is not a private good business, but we do it. Okay, so this is our biggest advantage is that we are independent on private commercial national interests. So then we very often do the arbitrage between different member states if they have different opinions on implementation of something. And inside the commission obviously we are not independent from European commission. But within the commission our biggest asset is to be policy neutral. So then we are doing very often the arbitrage within different disputes and we imagine that different policies they have their own interests and then we are very often in the middle and trying to put this debate based on the facts and the evidence which is available. So then we work very closely also with central services of European commission which are doing all this decision making among the services, the prioritization, but also we are supporting regulatory scrutiny board. I don't know if you know what it is. The regulatory scrutiny board is looking at every policy proposal which is going to the college of commissioners for decision and they are checking the facts, they are checking the robustness of the data models, etc. And we actually are providing them with this support because we are owners of roughly 100 economic, biophysical and nuclear models which we see there. We are also having in those other campuses some large-scale research infrastructure which is now being open to all users from the EU because some of them they have some spare capacity because they have been built long time ago and we don't use them anymore. So then we have a lot of temporary stuff just to keep the flexibility because the research question and focus is changing according to the priorities and the needs. So we also have a capacity of the fast response so then we have a very big capacity in disaster risk response. Actually we are the biggest knowledge hub of Europe but one of the biggest in the world in disaster risk analysis and response. So then we are actually if there is something happening wherever in the world disaster within two to four hours we are producing the first assessment of the damage. So it's really fast track. So we are running for EU and for the world the Copernicus emergency system. So we know that Copernicus I will be referring to it for agriculture but Copernicus is the best earth observation system in the world. The baby of the EU and a small part of it is for emergency. So then we are able to produce using this Copernicus emergency system the maps wherever it is needed on the globe because we can use the images and to produce this kind of stuff. Okay so this is us so then we are working with 30 different commission departments so it's really our expertise ranges from nuclear safety security safeguards to financial markets. So you mentioned Olivier Garçon being here. So Digifisma the financial market so we are working very closely with them and actually you know this bank guarantees and all this stuff it was calculated by my colleagues on the basis of our models which we developed in this respect. So it's really a very wide range of competencies which used to be disadvantage because it was very difficult to communicate who we are and what is our field of expertise but now with this complex wicked problem problems and challenges of the society I think this is a cutting-edge advantage because it's very rare to have capacities under one roof of such diverse characters and we are able to combine very unusual sets of skills within ours if there is a need. Okay good so today as it was announced I'm going to talk about Agri food sector what we have been doing to get very closely with Irish commissioner actually Phil Hogan is the biggest ambassador of science for agriculture and he is a very good ambassador except of our commissioner so then of our organization as well he visited us several times he's always calling for our expertise and it's amazing to work with him he's a very good smart guy and I think that he's really moving common agricultural policy in a good direction we are very happy working with him so he was looking for different options and he was pushing his colleagues but also asked to look at what are the different technology options which are now available actually to revolutionize or improve all this Agri food sector so then this is going to tackle all those elements which are there so what we may expect so obviously this data revolution I will be talking about that it's real revolution it's very often people are saying and my colleagues in the commission why you are so excited by the data we have been always using the data and official statistics has been established 150 years ago what's new but that's a lot of which is going to be found as you may expect so it's this kind of different tools which censors collecting of data which is going to provide completely different different opportunities in the policies and in agricultural policy we have all these seven-year cycles so then what usually was happening that there was some wishful thinking of policymaker or legislator at the beginning and then only after five or seven years they were able to look back and to see okay it didn't work so then let's try something else so then again seven years so what we are now trying to do is just to have in time monitoring of the performance of the policies so then this data revolution is allowing us to monitor every farm and I'm becoming to this in real time so then if you need to correct and there is in the middle this is not sort of artificial artificial diagram so this is what we have been testing in Lombardia in Italy with large number 15,000 of farms so this is a real time monitoring of the performance of the so it's obviously processors those who are processing the food distribution is going to be revolutionized 10 days ago to California and we had some meetings there and also I took opportunity to visit few companies based on geospatial data and it's amazing what is already on the market how they can predict just by counting and recognizing the cars, number of cars in the parking slot before in front of the supermarket they can really make the estimation of the profit but also of the demand of the so it's really amazing what is actually happening so then even before you go to the supermarket on the basis of data they can predict what you are going to buy not on the personal individual basis but on the basis of analysis of the pattern of the data of the behavior of the people in certain fields in certain regions they can perfectly predict what's going to be the level of consumption so it's very important because as we have been saying one of the problem of the food sector in the EU is food waste and if we want to reduce the footprint we have been talking about the climate environmental footprint so this is the best way we should be cutting of our waste because it is consumers again it's going to be really really improvement for consumers because you can check what is the origin what is the lifetime life cycle of every piece of the food which you are doing so and obviously this is changing the life of the farmer it's changing the life of the agricultural sector because it is part of the big complex complex ecosystem which one needs to take into account to avoid policy mistakes because you know you remember if I mention one which is close to agriculture policy mistake at the EU level it was the biofuel biofuel legislation and this is because we totally ignore the complex point of view we have been looking at the climate issue we have been looking very narrowly at the CO2 emissions and we said ok biofuels are great not very great because we didn't count in the CO2 emissions of the plant and we did not take into account the increase of the price of the food and we did not take into account the fact that the oil palms are going to be grown somewhere else outside EU with a big footprint and then this is even counterproductive so ok so this is what we need to and that's why this complex system analysis is very important that we are avoiding this kind of great mistake it's not only here but it's everywhere it's going to be complex system analysis and modeling and people talented in this field are going to be very very demanded species so it's going to be so this is this Cambrian explosion of data so you see this exponential increase of the data you see that we started somewhere around 2009-2010 so then somebody is saying that all the data produced by all humanity until 2009 is being produced in 2019 within one day so I don't know that this is true it's anecdote I don't think that it's possible to verify this but it just shows that it is really probably I am usually using the comparison with with the press discovering of the press the printing and the Gutenberg revolution and obviously if you want to be gloomy and the Gutenberg discovery was followed by 30 years war so because it was such a profound change in the society the society was unable to cope with it so then we need to make sure that the society is able to cope with this data revolution which is now happening obviously there is one big challenge and that's the challenge also for agri food sector but it's in general for the data industry is energy consumption already now the energy consumption is at the level of 8% of the global energy production it's only for data centers and data processing so then if somebody thinks that there is a way of centralizing the data collecting the data imagine we will have these drones we will have these sensors on the tractors and everywhere and this everything is going to be transferred to the big data centers it's absolutely impossible so we need to have something what we call edge computing or foc computing so the processing of the data will be done at the edges where they are produced this is the same applies for autonomous cars to send the data out of the data center and get back some response so all needs to be computed in the cars everything needs to be computed in your smartphones or when you have the sensors on the streets again this should be computed and only the metadata is going to be somehow centralized so it's very important element so this is what was our research showing what is the maturity and awareness of new technologies in the agriculture and what is actual adoption of this agriculture you see that this green histograms are awareness they know but it's far from being adopted that well there is one ongoing project which we do some behavioral analysis what would be the best approach how to work with the farmers to let them help them to actually adopt and then we have the huge issue of cyber security, data security and trust so if we want farmers to share their own data they need to trust platform they need to trust provider without data from the farmers we are not going to be able to provide all these services and to actually check the performance but they are not going to they are not going to trust everybody so they really need to be one element which is extremely important in this respect is to make sure that there is transparency of what is happening with the data and that's also linked to one of our reports on artificial intelligence where we are proposing sort of European third way of using artificial intelligence and data because you know that we have US and it's sort of less affair let's go as it goes run by industry then you have this Chinese way which is centralized and it's a more big brother type of collection of data and watching people so none of those seem to be acceptable in Europe so in Europe we have to develop something which will be of smaller scale where you will have a traceability of what you are actually doing with the data and what must be clear contract I give you the data but I'm going to get in response so I think that this is this is very important from that point of view actually I describe this so it's very difficult to convince a farmer to send the data to Yahoo and you don't know what is happening with the data and you are not getting anything in return ok so this is that was a video which I will show at the end we did a small animation of some anecdote about blockchain in a food in a food chain how this can be used but let me go straight to it's not boring you are still with me too long so I want to say what we are actually going to do what we are doing for common agricultural policy you know it's the biggest policy it's very much criticized very often actually it's the biggest success of the EU people as we always ignore that we have right now 70 years of peace we take it for granted and in fifties there was a lot of problems with the food security actually the common agricultural policy removed this totally this problem does not exist in Europe anymore so I think this is thanks to this common agricultural policy ok what we are going to do how this is going to respond to the new opportunities of the new technology so this is what we have been doing and actually it was the joint research center working over the years and you see that we have started at the very beginning of 90s already to implement the cutting technology for agriculture for common agricultural policy and are the most advanced place on this planet in land parcel identification system exactly thanks to early adoption of satellite imagery in early 90s and it was very low quality but nevertheless it was possible to use it but there was a huge advancement in in the meantime and now I'll show you on this picture you see 1990s that was the roughly the quality 2000 and 2015 2015 the Copernicus is allowing us to have not only the visual pictures but to have a multispectral analysis of the field so then we know everything what is happening in this field and you see that the recognition is very strong I didn't put the picture of different seasons but we have we have the picture of the same field taken every month and then you can perfectly watch what is happening in the field so then what actually is happening this error rate below two person that's the mantra of the court of auditors because the common agricultural policy is consuming half of the budget of the EU so everybody is watching whether this is consumed properly so that we cannot we cannot ignore so it's very important but what is annoying for everybody if somebody is watching you checking up on news whether you have the audits and you have and we have this responsibility and the duty to check physically 6% of the farms the fields and this is what we want to get rid of so that hopefully with this technology we will suppress all audits we are doing this audit so then we are going to make our life a little bit more we are not doing audits it's DG agriculture doing all the work for them based on satellite images so this is exactly what we may get and then we will be just looking at the performance and we will be informing in advance the farmers what is going on in their fields because we will have all this information because right now the capacity is that we can monitor every farm every field in Europe 2 to 3 times per week so that we can have high resolution high quality images with all this multi-spectral analysis at least twice a week so which gives you a fantastic opportunity ok so then this is what we actually want to do with and this is obviously producing the big data that's why we are talking about big data the biggest problem is who is going to process the data who is going to provide the platform because we do not have a big players in Europe as you know we do not have Yahoo's Google Google is perfectly able to do it but do we want the Google to do this do we want the Google to collect the data and provide no we don't want nobody wants this because we see that it's going little bit over the top so then this is the biggest problem that we are emerging which we are already now testing but they are able to provide the access to the data to all farmers and process the data which are going to be provided by farmers so then this is actually what are those highlights this reliable modern fair simple preventive and performant these are the highlights of the new common agricultural policy the new technologies and we are working right now and we have another year 2020 and we have 6 member states and we are testing this methodology because new cap will be rolled out as of January 2021 so then we need to be ready for 20, 7, 8 countries across the EU so then we are starting to work with other authorities because that is very important for payment so this is actually what is going to happen we will be asking the farmers just to send the pictures other picture from drone or from smartphone tacked process pictures which will be sort of compared with the satellite imagery and then we can conclude on or fulfilling the criteria for payments because for payments you need to have there are many criteria some of you may know it better than me you need to have some green areas you need to have some untouched areas you need to have this and that so this is all possible to monitor in real time so this is just an example how this geotact photos from farmers will be done so then you don't need to have audit national authorities going to check up on you so this is what is actually possible so then this is the list of all all possibilities or supports which are going to be provided to farmers timely tailored information to farmers climate resilience, law and mission practices and technologies which can be deployed development of digital advisory system the automation of processes simplification easy data capture solution and obviously the big big issue is interoperability because every member state has a slightly different approach every farmer or groupings of farmers will be using different devices so then big issue as always is interoperability but it is obviously solvable so this is what the new common agricultural policy is aiming at and you see there are this blue stuff is what EU is supposed to do and this yellow part is what member states are supposed to do in this respect and we are somewhere in the middle because we are working with the commission on this blue stuff but we are also working with member states very closely we have been working with each and every paying agency of the member states because this help is this land parcel identification system so then we have been helping and working with them and we are going to help them to implement all this needs which are linked to the new measures and the adoption of the new technologies so this is the overview of the conclusions what I mentioned I don't think that I need to repeat it it is going to be a revolution I think it is going to be very positive revolution I hope that all testing piloting this year and next year is going to bring positive results we have a lot of positive results and well I hope that the culture will be ahead of everybody and it will be huge huge sector and it will be early adopter of the advanced technologies to improve the life of the farmers improve the quality of their products for the use of of everybody so if you still alive and I will try to Hello I thought I would tell you about all the attention I get from blockchain which monitors my daily movements my friends and I love blockchain's new shared network it is a bit like being on social media a tomato knows how tough it can be to gain trust once you are with the blockchain crowd it is easy to mingle we tomatoes also like to feel that our data is safe blockchain tightens the lid increasing that security and it has a data validation protocol that guarantees the system virtually impregnable to any naughty business the peer-to-peer network decentralizes and streamlines the process by eliminating intermediaries blockchain's culture transparency allows you to see right through us so we have absolutely nothing to hide and the data from all our transactions is locked no one can delete or modify it whatever they want where we grow and wherever we decide to travel within the food supply chain you can easily trace us you could even see on which farm I was grown what I was fed and where I was processed before landing on your supermarket shelves blockchain enables the identification of safety breaches shielding consumers from potential hazards instant access to data such as on trade volumes or delivery times provides clients with greater market transparency smart contracts enable transactions to be automatically activated by your preset instructions blockchain streamlines the management of the supply chain by eliminating useless intermediaries uniting the physical and the digital food worlds is one of the many key challenges that blockchain or any other digital technologies used for this purpose currently faces blockchain is a young technology not yet fully delivering in terms of performance or scaling up capacity use cases need to be developed to decide best architecture options and security measures blockchain offers significant improvements in the agri-food sector that merits being explored thoroughly