The conference "Cultivating Data," organized by the Department of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Food of the Generalitat de Catalunya in collaboration with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), CREDA, and the Annual Technology Transfer Plan (PATT), took place at the Auditori de l’Edifici Vèrtex of the UPC in Barcelona. The event brought together over a hundred representatives from European institutions, public administrations, universities, and the primary sector.
The meeting aimed to reflect on information access, data value, and future challenges in the management and transparency of information within the agri-food, rural, and environmental fields. The Secretary General of the Department of Agriculture, Cristina Massot, emphasized the Observatory's commitment to the sector and the importance of its public work, highlighting the need for an infrastructure prepared for immediacy and the growing demand for clear and rigorous information.
The conference included a presentation by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission on open and interoperable data in Europe, followed by a panel discussion with representatives from Eurostat, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Idescat, the Diputació de Barcelona, and the UPC. The value of validated and harmonized statistics for guiding public policies and territorial decisions was discussed, as well as the different levels of data publicity.
The role of the Observatory was analyzed; in the last two years, its web portal has received over 4.5 million visits, and its viewer has accumulated more than 100,000 user actions. The platform, funded by European funds (FEDER), contains millions of data points aggregated into 1,325 indicators and 810 variables.
The final panel discussion focused on the transparency of food chain data. Future challenges for the Observatory include the integration of artificial intelligence, the consolidation of statistics, and the creation of a single data model, as well as greater interoperability with other platforms.
