The Food Safety Market (TheFSM) aims to deliver an industrial data platform that will significantly boost the way that food certification takes place in Europe. It brings together and builds upon existing innovations from innovative ICT SMEs to deliver a uniquely open and collaborative virtual environment that will facilitate the exchange and connection of data between different food safety actors who are interested in sharing information critical to certification. Extensive piloting is going to take place with subsidiaries of the TÜV AUSTRIA GROUP, a European provider of inspection and certification services that is a pioneer in the digitalization of the inspection business that has a presence in more than 40 countries, an annual turnover of almost 210 MEuros, and over 1,700 employees. In this way, the project is going to accelerate the pace by which this group adopts digital innovation and offers data-driven services to its clients in around the world. Eventually, TheFSM aspires to catalyse the digital evolution of the quite traditional but very data intensive business ecosystem that the global food certification market involves.

The IoF2020 project is dedicated to accelerate adoption of IoT for securing sufficient, safe and healthy food and to strengthen competitiveness of farming and food chains in Europe. It will consolidate Europe’s leading position in the global IoT industry by fostering a symbiotic ecosystem of farmers, food industry, technology providers and research institutes. The IoF2020 consortium of 73 partners, led by Wageningen UR and other core partners of previous key projects such as FIWARE and IoT-A, will leverage the ecosystem and architecture that was established in those projects. The heart of the project is formed by 19 use cases grouped in 5 trials with end users from the Arable, Dairy, Fruits, Vegetables and Meat verticals and IoT integrators that will demonstrate the business case of innovative IoT solutions for a large number of application areas. A lean multi-actor approach focusing on user acceptability, stakeholder engagement and sustainable business models will boost technology and market readiness levels and bring end user adoption to the next stage. This development will be enhanced by an open IoT architecture and infrastructure of reusable components based on existing standards and a security and privacy framework. Anticipating vast technological developments and emerging challenges for farming and food, the 4-year project stays agile through dynamic budgeting and adaptive decision-making by an implementation board of representatives from key user organizations. A 6 M€ mid-term open call will allow for testing intermediate results and extending the project with technical solutions and test sites. A coherent dissemination strategy for use case products and project learnings supported by leading user organizations will ensure a high market visibility and an increased learning curve. Thus IoF2020 will pave the way for data-driven farming, autonomous operations, virtual food chains and personalized nutrition for European citizens.