Synthesis report on environmental, economic, and social C&B of farm digitalisation, draft M46
Year: 2026
Type: report
Abstract: This deliverable synthetises progress made in WP4 of the CODECS project during the first 46 months. It focuses on the Costs and benefits analysis (C&B) of farm digitalisation across economic, environmental and social dimensions. Three objectives guide this work: (i) capturing stakeholders' perceptions of digitalisation (T4.2), (ii) assessing C&B through dedicated methodologies for each sustainability dimension: environmental (T4.3), economic (T4.4) and social (T4.5), and (iii) preparing a multicriteria framework to explore trade-offs and synergies (T4.6). Since the previous draft (D4.2, delivered M36), each task has moved from methodology and early results towards consolidated findings. Perceptions analysis (T4.2) has completed a second round of focus groups across the Living Labs, allowing stakeholder views to be examined not only as initial expectations but as they evolved once technologies were tested and experienced in practice; perceptions became more concrete and increasingly conditional on governance, support and trust rather than moving simply toward optimism or scepticism. The environmental assessment (T4.3) has completed comparative Life Cycle Assessments on ten use-cases, showing that digitalisation reduces overall environmental impacts in the large majority of cases, although about half of these reductions are modest, and some technologies increase specific impact categories tied to their own hardware life cycle. The economic analysis (T4.4) now covers thirteen Living Labs with farm-level data, nine of them analysed in depth: digital technologies proved economically viable in all nine in-depth cases under the conditions studied, with labour and input savings as the main drivers and farm size as the decisive factor for viability. The social/human- centred analysis (T4.5) is now complete and has been published in the Journal of Rural Studies (Florez et al., 2026); it confirms that digitalisation produces simultaneous and interdependent social costs and benefits across farmer well-being, work organisation and social interaction, rather than a uniform positive or negative effect. The multicriteria assessment (T4.6) has moved from conceptual design to an operational framework, tested through a pilot workshop with all 18 Living Lab coordinators in Ljubljana, generating a first exploratory dataset on trade-offs and enabling conditions. Across all tasks, methodologies have been adapted to the diversity of the Living Labs, with guidelines and training provided to coordinators, and results have been systematically returned to Living Lab stakeholders through individual reports and demonstration events, so that farmers, advisors and local actors benefit directly from the knowledge generated. This report remains an incremental draft. Several analyses are still being finalised – notably the comparative interpretation of the second-round focus groups (T4.2), the qualitative environmental analysis for Living Labs where LCA was not feasible (T4.3), and the completion of scoring and cross-case comparison in the multicriteria assessment (T4.6). Individual LL reports related to the studies conducted in each task are available in the ZENODO project repository and the final, fully consolidated synthesis report, integrating economic, environmental and social findings into a single cross-dimensional analysis of trade-offs and synergies, will be delivered at M48.
Source: HAL
Authors: Gobrecht, Alexia, Florez, Mauro, Bellon-Maurel, Véronique, Iliopoulos, Costas, Theodorakopoulou, Irini, Santori, Alexandra, Giotis, Thomas, Herrera, Beatriz, Towsend, Leanne, Mahon, Niamh, Pittaway, Tom, Ušča, Maija, Killis, Emils, Gauche, Karine, Vergamini, Daniele, Nadalutti, Tiziana, Ortolani, Livia, Lepore, Fabio, Brunori, Gianluca, Bartolini, Fabio
Institutions: Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement, Technologies & méthodes pour les agricultures de demain, Hellenic Agricultural Organization - DIMITRA, University of Hohenheim, James Hutton Institute, Baltic Studies Centre, Montpellier Interdisciplinary center on Sustainable Agri-food systems: social and nutritional sciences, University of Pisa, University of Ferrara
Language: English
Topic: Smart Agriculture and AI
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7216744705