From technological fixes to systemic change: Vision-led innovation for Europe's crop farming systems

So far, agricultural technologies have mostly been developed to economize on expensive production inputs or to expand production in response to demand. The interplay of these individual, narrow-focused technology developments has profoundly transformed agricultural systems. In particular, economies of scale have led to large machinery, for which fields had to be made larger, more homogeneous, and more regularly shaped. This has considerably increased agricultural productivity, but has also come with considerable costs, such as soil degradation and biodiversity loss. We here propose a new paradigm for agricultural technology development, in which a vision for a more sustainable agricultural system is developed first, followed by the advancement of the required technologies, alongside complementary institutional reforms, policy changes, and novel business models to achieve it. In this paper, we systematically take stock of where we are in this process, i.e., how to identify target systems, what is the current technological frontier in sensing, robotics, AI modeling, breeding, and environmental monitoring, and which policy and business model innovations are now needed to realize the highest economic and environmental benefits at the lowest cost (financially and non-financially). This crucially includes anticipation of risks and the management of trade-offs.