The role of public policies in the digitalisation of the agri-food sector. A systematic review

Figures & data

Table

Agri-food sub-type	Innovation sub-type	Technology sub-type
Agri-food Agriculture E-agriculture Farming Food processing Food production	Digital innovation Digitalisation Innovation Innovation system Open innovation	Digital ICT Information and communications technology

Figure 1. Process of compiling the final selection of papers.

Figure 2. Yearly distribution of papers in the initial search and final sample.

Figure 3. Roles that public policies should fulfil in the digitalisation of the agri-food sector.

Justifications for policy interventions.

1.1 Need to develop appropriate digital and physical infrastructure and data regulations	1.1.1 Data regulations	Provide clarity in data regulations and policies to maintain trust at the farm level (Relf-Eckstein et al., 2019)
		Provide clarity on the rules on access and use of data to encourage the adoption of the technologies that expect data integration (Jakku et al., 2019)
	1.1.2 Digital infrastructure	Digitalisation brings with it the need for public investment into technical infrastructure in the rural areas (Rotz et al., 2019)
		Low-density rural areas need support for developing ICT infrastructure, whose strength in turn is strongly related to the probability of the adoption of new technologies by individual enterprises (Galliano & Roux, 2003)
		More attention to establishing proper digital infrastructure is needed (Michels et al., 2020)
		The lack of quality of the digital infrastructure is a bottleneck in the adoption of data-based technologies according to the potential target group (Jakku et al., 2019)
		Policies are needed to provide necessary infrastructure (Barrett & Rose, 2020)
		“Reactivity of rural agribusinesses” leads to the need for public policy involvement in ensuring the development of digital infrastructure (Bowen & Morris, 2019)
1.2 Risks of imbalanced progress	1.2.1 Avoidance of digital divides	Avoid digital divides (Klerkx et al., 2019)
		Benefits have to be shared among stakeholders in a way that boosts confidence in technologies (Shepherd et al., 2020)
		Farmers that are under the risk of missing out on the benefits of technological development need additional support (Barrett & Rose, 2020)
	1.2.2 Improved access to new technologies	Appropriate policies have the potential to mitigate challenges to do with access and sustainable business models (Carmela Annosi et al., 2020)
		Specialised farm machinery is a niche market; therefore, support from public sector is needed for acquisition (Bellon-Maurel & Huyghe, 2017)
		Support for deployment of technologies that could help alleviate environmental pressure (Von Braun et al., 2017)
		Promote technologies to tackle the climate crisis (Radulescuu et al., 2019)
	1.2.3 Damage prevention	Policymakers should be able to detect technologies that have potentially negative effect and if necessary, take measures to change the technology trajectory (Barrett & Rose, 2020)
		Lessons from the Green revolution should show public sector that a “precautionary approach” to digitalisation has to be maintained, especially in terms of potentially further aggravating power imbalances and not taking into account the previous experience of stakeholders (Avaria, 2020)
	1.2.4 Inclusive innovation ecosystem	A prerequisite for more inclusive agricultural research is further investment “in social and communications innovation and infrastructure, technology and methods” (Nelson et al., 2019)
		Dedicate specific efforts to make sure that the interests of potentially weaker stakeholders are taken into account in the innovation process (Bronson, 2018)
1.3 Improve the competitiveness of the agri-food sector	1.3.1 Farm productivity and efficiency	Enable the development of more efficient farming practices (Bowen & Morris, 2019)
		Promoting digital entrepreneurship is a way for creating potential for growth of profitability of farms (Ratten, 2018)
	1.3.2 Value chain development	Encourage the adoption of digital technologies to achieve diversification and internationalisation in the agri-food value chain (Bowen & Morris, 2019)
	1.3.3 Enhance technology development	Encourage competition between technology providers (Bronson, 2019)

Policy interventions.

2.1 Encourage sustainable adoption of the new technologies		Provide open data solutions to key stakeholders (Adamashvili et al., 2020)
		Efforts should be directed to supporting open-source tools (Rotz et al., 2019)
		Enable the development of more “simple and practical technologies” (Bucci et al., 2018).
		Regulate power asymmetries in the value chain to encourage the adoption of smart farming technologies at the farm level (Jakku et al., 2019).
		Intensification of R&D to provide solutions that meet the requirements of the current farming systems to support wider adoption of technologies (Chuang et al., 2020)
2.2 Support data quality, integrity and availability		It is likely that governance mechanisms need to be put in place to “monitor the representativeness, accuracy and security of the data that decisions are based on” to support the bargaining power of farmers in the value chain (Fielke et al., 2020)
		Regulate farm-level data collection in the interests of many instead of the few (Bronson, 2019)
2.3 Change the process of public sector’s interventions	2.3.1 Changing the role of public sector	The role of public policies in collecting data and information about the agricultural sector should be re-examined in the light of technological developments (Relf-Eckstein et al., 2019)
		Further privatisation of agricultural advisory systems will leave formal governance structures with the role of market facilitator, which means that “traditional technology transfer and monitoring/surveillance responsibilities become much broader” because of the additional stakeholders (Fielke et al., 2020)
		Provide “policy infrastructure that can cope with socio-technical change“ (Fielke et al., 2019)
	2.3.2 Monitoring and decision-making	Biosurveillance systems should exploit the advantages of the new technologies (Devitt et al., 2019)
		Satellite data could be used to monitor crops, including identifying unauthorised extraction of water for irrigation (Negula et al., 2017)
		Big data solutions could be used for decision-making by the policymakers (Carmela Annosi et al., 2020)
		Farm data can be used extensively to assess the level of sustainability of different practices (Van der Burg et al., 2019)
		The technological development will bring along the increased power to survey the processes of agri-food sector (Fielke et al., 2020)

Ways for carrying out the policy interventions.

3.1 Strive for balanced policies	3.1.1 Ex-ante assessment of development paths	Careful analysis is needed about the trade-offs between the different paths in the development of digital agriculture and impacts on ecosystem services (Lajoie-O’Malley et al., 2020)
		Goals and objectives are needed that would enable the use of new technologies by agroecological farmers (Rotz et al., 2019)
		The emerging changes in the role of AKIS require a carefully considered response, which will need to be based on a digitalisation strategy to “reveal emerging issues, such as data ownership and to reflect and respond to potentially undesirable consequences such as the exclusion of certain groups” (Rijswijk et al., 2019)
	3.1.2 Facilitate social innovation	“Equitably realised digital farming transition demands a high level of social rather than simply technical innovation” (Bronson, 2019)
	3.1.3 Clarify technological, social, economic and R&D needs	It could be beneficial in the policy development to differentiate between the factors affecting the adoption of technologies (characteristics of users) and factors affecting the inclusiveness and fairness of digitalisation (characteristics of technologies; Giua et al., 2020)
		The design of policies should take care that the interests of “high adapters” would not be disproportionally represented (Groher et al., 2020)
		Differentiate between the technological needs of different types of farms (Yoon et al., 2020).
		Socio-economic limitations should be addressed to support the acceptance of technological innovation (Li et al., 2019)
		There is a need for regulations that would support the rights of the consumer in accessing software and its’ generated data. In combination, there is a need for steps for the democratisation of data that would “prioritise the right of society over the interests of shareholders” (Rotz et al., 2019).
		Develop an inclusive innovation ecosystem (Bronson, 2018).
3.2 Subscribe to cross-cutting concepts	3.2.1 Link innovation ecosystem development with missions	Use innovation ecosystems thinking for innovation that supports sustainability (Pigford et al., 2018)
		In order to ensure balanced development, mission-oriented innovation policies should be used (Klerkx & Begemann, 2020)
		Innovation policies should strive towards supporting the development of Mission Oriented Agricultural Innovation Systems (MAIS; Klerkx & Rose, 2020)
3.3 Adjust the policies according to the maturity level of innovation	3.3.1 Nurture emerging technologies and innovations	Support the starting-up phase of innovations (Lombardo et al., 2018)
		Create policies to nurture the emerging technologies (Adamashvili et al., 2020)
	3.3.2 Pick low-hanging fruits	More attention should be put on adoption of mature technologies that could have immediate positive effect instead of focusing on solutions with lower readiness levels (Barrett & Rose, 2020)
3.4 Dialogue between the stakeholders	3.4.1 Develop inclusive collaboration platforms	Dialogue between relevant stakeholders serves as a prerequisite for the creation of a moderate discourse around the future of big data in agriculture (Fleming et al., 2018)
		Involve citizens proactively to enable more ethical outcomes (Eastwood et al., 2017)
		Involve a wide circle of stakeholders to discussions to ensure sustainable transition (Fielke et al., 2019)
		New biosurveillance systems should be co-created and high ethical standards must be ensured (Devitt et al., 2019)
		Effective forms of cooperation like PPP have to be established between public and private stakeholders (Carmela Annosi et al., 2020)
		There is a wide array of new stakeholders from the digital technology sector that are playing increasingly important role in the AKIS. It is important to find sufficient synergies between information and skills of the new stakeholders and the agricultural expertise of the more traditional stakeholders (Ingram & Maye, 2020)
	3.4.2 Break the silos of policy makers	The policymakers also from the outside of the agricultural policy field need to be included (policies of autonomous farm vehicles, for example; Relf-Eckstein et al., 2019)
	3.4.3 International collaboration	Enable international collaboration to adopt to changing environment (Von Braun et al., 2017)
3.5 Disseminate information and knowledge effectively	3.5.1 Curriculum development	Smart Farming related issues should be part of the curriculum in vocational schools and universities (Bellon-Maurel & Huyghe, 2017)
	3.5.2 Develop new skills	Training and education on new technologies should be provided (Yoon et al., 2020)
		Trainings on communication with the public should be provided for explaining the benefits of the new technologies for animal welfare and the environment (Pfeiffer et al., 2020)
		Need new skills for processing and interpreting the data collected (Jakku et al., 2019)
		Policies are needed to improve the skills of farmers that are otherwise under the risk of being left behind (Barrett & Rose, 2020)
	3.5.3 Reform innovation diffusion	Newest ICT solutions must be implemented for innovation diffusion (Norton & Alwang, 2020)
		Improve access to information and advice to increase adoption of new technologies (Knierim et al., 2019)
		Use innovation brokering service to communicate to agricultural technology companies the needs of farmers who are not industrialised and technologically advanced (Lioutas & Charatsari, 2020)
		Investments “in social and communications innovation and infrastructure, technology and methods” are needed (Nelson et al., 2019).
	3.5.4 Facilitate the changing role of public sector through policy	Integrated policy framework should facilitate the faster dissemination of information about the ICT developments (Tiwari, 2008)
		The role of public sector in the knowledge transfer is decreasing and is replaced by the farm media (Relf-Eckstein et al., 2019)

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