**1. Introduction and state of the art**

Economic development sits at the crossroads of two megatrends that are developing fast and are ready to change the way human societies think and act about the future. One of these is sustainable development that attempts to change models, approaches, and cultures to balance the competitive impetuosity with the needs and limitations of the supporting ecosystems, while the other is the digital transformation (a.k.a. the smart revolution) which means fast, independent, and ubiquitous computers and electronic device processing large amounts of data continuously. Although these axes are very visible in manufacturing (e.g., Industry 4.0), automotive, consumer electronics, and even e-government, they are also present to a large extent in the field of agriculture and rural development, and they have an even more clear impact here because many areas of these sectors are a bit left behind in terms of development especially in developing countries. This is also the case in Central and Eastern Europe which came out of the communist period with an outdated agriculture that relied on mechanization and chemical products rather than biosciences and ecologically sound approaches. Moreover, the necessary process of restoring property rights further leads to de-evolution as small landowners had to gain technical and financial proficiency in order to rebecome competitive after a few decades.

This chapter deals with developments in smart agriculture cooperation in Romania and Slovakia, two countries that used to be part of the Eastern Block and faced similar but also specific challenges and which are now finding a new identity as part of the Danube macro-region coordinated and financed by the European Union (EU). The cross-cultural links among west and east along the Danube river are very good premise for establishing cooperation in the area of innovation support to help revitalize the agricultural sector in the 12 countries involved.

Scientifically speaking, smart agriculture is a trendy topic with significant developments being published in the last years. We will focus our next analysis on the situation in Europe, Romania, and Slovakia, addressing some important contributions both in the technical domain and in the economic one (**Table 1**).

Of course, this presentation is not exhaustive due to space limitations and a focus that does not include all the scientific disciplines connected with smart agriculture (e.g., chemistry, materials science, biotechnology, etc.). Its role is to provide an overview of the landscape that hosts the approaches described below in which the authors have been directly involved.


**81**

**Figure 1.**

*EU's approach to bioeconomy [12] (figure adapted by the authors).*

*International Cooperation for Smart and Sustainable Agriculture*

**2. Current situation of smart agriculture in Europe**

The European Union and to a larger extent all the countries of Europe, as they have strong ties to the union, are searching for a pathway to competitiveness for a long time now. First came the Lisbon Strategy, then the Europe 2020 Strategy, and now the Future of Europe toward 2030 is being discussed. These fundamental guidelines helped maintain Europe on a strong development course in terms of economic growth, social inclusion, and competitiveness through troubling times like the 2008 financial crises and significant structural transformation like Industry 4.0. In all these documents, the issues of environmental accountability and efforts to protect the diversity of European ecosystems have been in the spotlight, constituting a signature trait of the union in the international arena. On the operational plane, sectoral strategies for agriculture and bioeconomy have been developed in the past years that include the concept of "smartness," thus fostering the appearance of smart and precision agriculture policies, funding instruments, technologies, solutions, and implementers. The support for this approach has led to the development of a competitive agricultural sector while at the same time ensuring the protection and safeguarding of the environment. This easily noticeable within the European Innovation Partnership "Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability" initiative acts as an innovation highway between EU's rural development programs and research and development programs and their associated stakeholders [11]. The main goals and directions of intervention of the EU bioeconomy strategy

The three main axes are targeting sea and oceans, the replacement of fossil fuels and resources with bioresources (i.e., that can be grown), and the food and energy security of European citizens. Agriculture plays an important role as the source for many of the raw materials needed to implement these changes. Also, it is in its turn affected by the need to reduce the water footprint and the usage of fertilizers, while at the same increasing the yields and the quality of agricultural products. There are multiple ramifications to finding solutions relating to these issues, with smart and

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86464*

are summed up in **Figure 1**.

#### **Table 1.**

*Comparative analysis of sustainable development scenarios.*

*Sustainability Assessment at the 21st Century*

authors have been directly involved.

Data mining study of 17,700 papers that shows the position of Europe as lagging in precision agriculture research and identifies a progression from topics related to crop management toward

Investigation of technical approaches to machine learning applications in the areas of crop, livestock, water, and soil management, underlining their importance for future fullscale artificial intelligence deployment

State-of-the-art study on the role of big data approaches for the development of smart farming, including closed vs. open access models

Development, testing, and performance review of an online cloud-based platform for small

Solution building for a cyber-physical system that provides real-time monitoring and intervention in supervising potato cultivated fields

Case study on image processing of satellite photography for determining land destination and testing of the accuracy of the method

Economic and environmental benefits of implementing precision techniques for the use

Creating dataset maps through data fusion in order to support the scenario-based policy interventions, with possible applications in

Algorithmic intercountry parallel investigation of the performances obtained by company processing agricultural products

*Comparative analysis of sustainable development scenarios.*

Mode of employment, results analysis, and improvement opportunities related to employing precision agriculture solutions

of pesticides in crop management

agriculture

sustainability and sensorics

smart farm management

**Scientific content Type of** 

as part of the Danube macro-region coordinated and financed by the European Union (EU). The cross-cultural links among west and east along the Danube river are very good premise for establishing cooperation in the area of innovation support

Scientifically speaking, smart agriculture is a trendy topic with significant developments being published in the last years. We will focus our next analysis on the situation in Europe, Romania, and Slovakia, addressing some important contribu-

Of course, this presentation is not exhaustive due to space limitations and a focus that does not include all the scientific disciplines connected with smart agriculture (e.g., chemistry, materials science, biotechnology, etc.). Its role is to provide an overview of the landscape that hosts the approaches described below in which the

**contribution**

Literature review

Literature review

Literature review

Practical achievement

Practical achievement

Theoretical study

Theoretical study

Practical achievement

Empirical study

**Geographic scope Source**

Not defined/global Liakos et al.

Not defined/global Wolfert et al.

Romania Colezea et al.

Romania Herbei et al.

Romania Rad et al. [6]

Slovakia Pazúr and

Hungary, Romania, EU

Czech Republic, Slovakia

User survey Five countries in the EU

Pallottino et al. [1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

Takács-György et al. [7]

Bolliger [8]

Čechura and Malá [9]

Barnes et al. [10]

Global/Europe,

Italy

to help revitalize the agricultural sector in the 12 countries involved.

tions both in the technical domain and in the economic one (**Table 1**).

**80**

**Table 1.**
