Mirandela, located in the Trás-os-Montes region of Portugal, is known for its olive oil, almond production, and livestock farming. Despite being “behind the mountains”, not even here are farmers safe from the increasing challenges in the sector. These agricultural systems are susceptible to climate change. Longer drought periods, rising temperatures, and irregular rainfall can directly impact the blooming, the yields and production cycles. Alongside the ageing of farmers, the constant rural depopulation, and limited access to digital tools, farmers have a difficult life that many run from.
Main Challenges in Mirandela: From rural depopulation to lack of digital tools
- Climate change and Instability
Rising temperatures and longer drought periods are big concerns to farmers in this region as there are few irrigation systems and no large water retentions projects. The climate instability makes predicting production cycles harder, but parallel to this, these cultures become more susceptible to new pests and diseases. Moreover, soil degradation and low percentage of irrigation systems makes it challenging for farmers to anticipate climate-related risks and obtain successful yields.
- Ageing Farmers and Rural Depopulation
Another challenge is the continuous ageing of the population, similar to our partners in Hungary and other food systems, combined with rural depopulation. These are serious issues that affect the whole country’s economy and its industries, but especially the agricultural sector. The average farmer in Mirandela is around 60 years old, and with few young people to replace them, there is a critical lack of workforce. Besides the crippling workforce, the subsequent lack of knowledge transfer is threatening traditional farming practices and tampering the innovation in the sector. The obvious solution seems to be digitalization, but most farmers in this area lack digital literacy and access to easy-to-use technology.
- Lack of Digital Tools and Market Access
Most farmers still depend on their traditional methods for farm management, which leads to inefficiencies and limits their market competitiveness. Having started PHITO Prototype testing, I keep encountering many farmers with little access or knowledge of digital tools or even to precision agriculture tools. Without these tools, farmers are unable to optimize their resources. This combined with the absence of real-time market data or digital trading platforms, farmers are left to negotiate fair prices while trying to reach broader consumer bases. Without digital infrastructure, small farmers remain disconnected from new opportunities, limiting their ability to sell their products and expand their business.
How can PHITO Support Farmers in Mirandela?
PHITO is a farmer-centered digital platform that offers solutions to help farmers overcome these barriers. By focusing on innovation and sustainable practices, the PHITO app is helping farmers become more prepared for the changes to come. Being co-designed with farmers, PHITO tackles all the challenges mentioned above.
- Digitalization for Climate Adaptation
By incorporating satellite imagery known as NDVI (Normalized difference vegetation index), this allows farmers to monitor the health of their crops, detect any possible pest outbreaks, early stress, and potentially optimize water use, allowing farmers to control the possible damage drought can induce. While this gives the farmers a deepened insight into what is going on in the field, allowing them to create tasks and monitor previous activities, it grants the farmers better control over their farm.
- Supporting Ageing Farming Population and Rural Depopulation
Co-designing with farmers ensures that even farmers with low digital literacy can navigate easily through the app, as all feedback is valuable feedback. To support this issue, PHITO has created features to enhance not only the collaboration between farmers but also the communication between the local community. The main features are being able to send direct messages between farmers or communities, facilitating communication between cooperatives, advisors, associations, and farmers. Besides promoting knowledge exchange and collaboration within the local community, it can also help reduce isolation, an issue that grows with ageing.
- Enhancing Digital Access and Market Opportunities
Despite still being in a prototype phase, PHITO already discloses a clever way to help solve the uneven market opportunities. The app offers its own community market, enabling farmers to list and sell their products digitally, reducing their dependence on middlemen while increasing their profits. Alongside this feature, this virtual market allows for an exchange of services, which can reduce the necessity of outsourcing services to other communities. By offering a digital record-keeping for the on-farm activities, this grants farmers to track their activities and any other possible remarks, simplifying and improving their business decision-making. By creating its own market, PHITO creates a space where retailers, associations, and cooperatives can go and find these farmers, possibly streamlining product aggregation, empowering the farmers, creating a more competitive market.
Next Steps for PHITO in Trás-os-Montes
To be able to ensure that PHITO meets the expectations of the farmers, most partners are now testing the prototype with local farmers to refine the application functionality and ease of use. Here in Mirandela, I, Tomás Lavrador, am in charge of developing the user testing.
As of now, we have gained some valuable insight into possible new features that the farmers mentioned. Driving the PHITO Van around from farm to farm facilitates this process, while also showcasing it to curious neighbors. I hope that by embracing digitalization and innovation, farmers in the Trás-dos-Montes area can build a more resilient, competitive and robust agricultural system and community, ensuring its rich agricultural heritage thrives in the face of these modern challenges. Having access to digital tools like PHITO provides an affordable, practical way for farmers to keep adapting and collaborating closer with cooperatives, researchers, policymakers, and other farmers, is essential to drive sustainable innovation. Keep following PHITO and myself on this path to sustainable innovation.
