Louise McKeeve
CIO, Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
The Food Vision 2030 Strategy aims to position Ireland as a global leader in sustainable food systems, benefiting the agri-food sector, society and the environment over the next decade.
A key deliverable of the Food Vision 2030 strategy and its Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is to identify baseline data and develop an analytics and visualisation system to track: (1) progress on climate actions and (2) impacts on environment indicators identified.
Environmental monitoring collaboration
The Department has developed a public-facing dashboard to identify baseline data to assess, monitor and identify any significant environmental effects arising from the implementation of Food Vision 2030. It is working with a cross-industry collaborative forum bringing together government agencies and departments and commercial lab services. food producers, processors and retailers.
The Department uses farm data to predict environmental measures that can prevent Campylobacter outbreaks. Collaboration between food industry stakeholders and regulators has led to a coordinated effort to reduce Campylobacter levels in Irish food.
Digital disruption
Digital disruption is a breakthrough that influences change in an existing system, the way consumers, industries or markets operate from conventional to more modern or renewable utilising digital technology. The practice of farming and food production is not immune to this disruption. The priority for farmers today is improving productivity, whether through agriculture technologies, such as agriculture technology (agtech) for improving operations, biological products or sustainable practices.
Thanks to these new technologies, Ireland
is embracing digital changes in farming.
Agriculture technology innovations
Agtech innovations such as robots, sensors, aerial images and GPS technology are improving efficiency and productivity, supporting sustainability and ultimately contributing positively to farming. Artificial intelligence (AI) can help agriculture in many ways. It enables precision farming by analysing data from sensors, satellites and drones, leading to optimised resource usage, increased crop yield and reduced environmental impact.
Precision agriculture, a key application of AI in smart farming, involves the utilisation of sensors, drones and satellite imagery to monitor crop health, soil conditions and weather patterns. Thanks to these new technologies, Ireland is embracing digital changes in farming.
Sustainable IT
The Department has taken steps towards sustainable IT by investing in an Enterprise Kubernetes platform. Kubernetes can scale up or down, as the workload increases or decreases. Furthermore, a ‘Lightswitch Ops’ strategy can completely power down applications during periods of known non-usage, like out-of-business hours.
As part of our sustainable IT strategy, we now measure and track the carbon footprint of workloads to identify opportunities for further improvements. These efforts aim to deliver the highest standards of sustainable IT services for Ireland’s citizens.
