Public Participation in Developing a Common Framework for the Assessment and Management of Sustainable Innovation

Related sector

• A - Agriculture, forestry and fishing
• C - Manufacturing
  • Manufacture of food products

SI Lead organisation

WeatherMe LLC - Business actor ( Small private organisations (SME) )

http://vitalfields.com/

SI Scope

SI Process

Start Date: 2011 End Date: N/A

Start Date: 2011 End Date: Ongoing

Start Date: 2011 End Date: Ongoing

Link to H2020 SI Priorities

• ICT mapping natural resources and trends
• ICT to assess and predict climate actions
• Climate change adaptation solutions

SI Type

• Service / Process - The innovation lies in an online service that helps to forecast weather and plant diseases.

• Organisational / Business model - The innovative app promises new capabilities and solutions in the business practices of various companies.
• Marketing - Vital Fields is a specialised tool with high usability – internet connection is the only precondition for using the service.

SI Objectives

• Revolutionising farm management in a simple and affordable way and promoting effective and sustainable use of resources (for farm management – e.g. exploitation of pesticides and fertilisers can be reduced, using tractors may not be necessary etc).
• Enabling farmers to make production more efficient with optimal fieldwork and resource planning.
• Offering advice on when to plant and harvest, giving guidance on pest management and use of chemicals.
• Benchmarking fields against each other and supporting farmers in becoming more smart based on the knowledge accumulated from similar farms.

• To help farmers manage their fields aiming to offer advice on when to plant, harvest and offer guidance on pest management and use of chemicals.
• Vital Fields predicts infection likelihoods, which in turn allows farmers to target pesticides and fertilizer use more accurately.

SI Origin

Vital Fields was founded in 2011 at the Garage48 hackathon and is also an alumnus of the accelerator Startup Wise Guys. The company has been successful in penetrating the Estonian farming sector and has take up in the Baltics, UK, USA, Poland and Ukraine and with plans to rapidly expand its operations to Germany, Hungary and Denmark. By now, Vital Fields counts more than 1,500 farms as customers worldwide and seeks to use the new capital for customising its solution for several new countries in Europe this year.

SI Factors of success

• Technological - Automating and consolidating various agricultural data. Plant disease and growth phase modelling. Tracking climatic patterns and analysing farmer\\\'s input to deliver a risk assessment.
• Economic - Avoids expensive software, only needing internet connection.
• Environmental - Accurate forecasting allows effective management and planning.
• Spatial / Urban - Benchmarking, know-how from similar settings.

Sources

• Primary - Primary information will be gathered through the interviews with stakeholders and original documents that the company allows to share.
• Secondary - Many sources describing the development, implementation and diffusion of the SI case are available e.g. through: http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/04/farming-apps, http://www.tradewithestonia.com/news-events/articles-and-success-stories/2022-estonian-startup-helps-farmers-manage-crops, http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/08/02/estonia-startup-helps-farmers-manage-crops/