Integration of Agricultural Robotics in European Farming

Abstract

The existing farming practices are becoming increasingly challenging due to prevailing agricultural practices and a declining workforce in the European agriculture sector. This research explored the feasibility of intro-ducing the latest agricultural technologies, robotics, in five European countries: Finland, Spain, Italy, Austria, and France, with particular focus on strawberry production. The research identified contributing factors for agricultural technology, existing applications of agricultural robotics technologies, countries’ performance in the agriculture sector in recent years, governmental and institutional support for agricultural technological application and development. The publicly available secondary data from national agricultural ministries, Eu-ropean Commission publications, Eurostat databases, and other reliable sources were referred. The findings revealed that the highest utilized agricultural area was available in France, followed by Spain and then Italy. In the aspect of the agricultural holdings and average size of a farm, Italy had the highest number of agricultural holdings and the lowest average size of farm size. Spain demonstrated the highest strawberry production (325,451 tonnes in 2023) with extensive greenhouse cultivation. France showed strong greenhouse productivi-ty despite similar cultivation area to Finland. Finland recorded the lowest production output (13,898 tonnes) despite having a comparable cultivation area to Austria and France. The agricultural workforce in all the coun-tries were declined, emphasis the importance of increasing mechanization. All the countries are adapted with EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Strategic Plans for agricultural development and technology adoption focused on farm modernization, digital transformation, promoting innovations and strengthening young farmers and new entrepreneurs.