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WP2
: Inventory of legislation and
geotraceability data management
1. Report on
the inventory of regulations and traceability data in
the different production sectors
The objective of this deliverable is to gain in an
understanding of the technical constraints and of the
general context in which the new functionalities of
the LPIS/GIS will operate. An inventory of regulations
governing the different aspects involved in the new
CAP reform, traceability and agro-environmental measures
has been performed. As the project aims at studying
the possibility to develop integrated systems, this
inventory mainly concerns aspects like interrelation
between traceability and other certifiable systems
as well as the identification and communication standards.
As far as management of the countryside and the environment
is concerned, the European legislation is based mainly
on directives, providing to the Member States or Regions,
the possibility to adopt, in their entirety or only
partly, standards and to adapt them to their respective
(sub-) regions according to the existing pedoclimatic
conditions. For Agro-Environmental Measures (AEM),
differences between the two test regions (Gers in France,
Wallonia in Belgium) are therefore more obvious because
most of these measures aim at meeting agro-environmental
needs in close connection with the regional pedoclimatic
characteristics and traditional practices . Nevertheless,
it was often possible to bring out common topics to
both areas.
The detailed analysis of the regulations in the two
areas allowed to highlight data sources needed for
the control (or auto-control) of the respect of the
eco-conditionality in relation to standards in force
as far as good agricultural practices and protection
of environment are concerned. Concerning the data sources
involved in good agricultural practices, the LPIS,
the traceability data as well as information resulting
from remote sensing are largely the most required source
of data and seems to be an essential tool for control
the whole of measures in force in the 2 regions. Remote
sensing seems to be promising in term of interesting
information in many fields. These results are in accordance
and confirm the initial objectives of the project.
Concerning the data sources used for the control
of cross compliance related to protection of the environment,
documents that farmers must be able to supply Administration
with constitute the first data source necessary for
control. In both regions, traceability data represent
the second potential source of data for control purposes.
The results of the survey on traceability regulation
showed that from a technological perspective, no regulation
exist for enforcing electronic enabled traceability.
Paper recording is still valid and advocated by many
parties involved. Nevertheless, there is an increasing
awareness that electronic recording and communication
is the only means to guarantee effective, rapid and
verifiable traceability. The diffusion of EDI and of
the common standard is low, despite the strong need
of them and the economical and juridical impulse made
by organisations in different countries. In fact the
adoption of such standards requires cultural co-operation
and willingness, disciplines rarely found in the agro-food
sector. This analysis justifies the necessity to propose
common norms and standards adapted to the different
sectors.
This report also allowed analyzing
some specification handbooks set up within the framework
of the "quality" or "system
quality" approaches. It is interesting to note
that the farmer has to provide a set of data almost
identical in all the cases. These data are in relation
with administrative constraints but also with technical
and geographical aspects of agricultural productions.
If these data are becoming available, it is possible
to use them in order to organize the certification
(e.g. geographical certification of an agricultural
production) or even to plan strategies in order to
ensure food safety (e.g. withdrawal of the defective
productions resulting from one or more parcels and
their nearest neighbours). These conclusions are in
accordance with the idea to set up of an integrated
system to valorise all existing data.
The second part of this deliverable examines the
characteristics and the functionalities of the tools
used in the two test regions to collect traceability
data. The comparison of the metadata used in both situations
for the description of data and the standards used
for their exchange between actors of the traceability
chain is also realised.
In the two test regions, the recent evolutions as
regards regulation on traceability, development of
farm management tools or implementation of the new
CAP led to collect and exchange more and more information
between the farms and the information systems of the
upstream-downstream actors. This rapid evolution was
at the origin of the installation of initiatives gathered
around Agro-EDI-Europe for France and of ASDAC for
Belgium. In term of data exchanges between applications
using these standards, the main problem relates to
the dictionaries which are used and which are not easily
compatible. Moreover, the same objects are not always
described in the same way (parcel, farm, production
unit, coding...) or by the same term. A standardization
of the definitions of these various objects and the
definition of a series of attributes making it possible
to better describe them is therefore essential. This
task includes establishing the equivalence between
codifications, and the correspondences between elements
implemented in the different dictionaries. Given these
facts, it is for the moment difficult to envisage initiating
exchanges of data between the two systems. At the European
level this will be achieved through the definition
of common and harmonized codifications or Data Dictionary
for the data exchanges, and the sharing (access free)
of these codifications between all the agro-food chain
actors involved in data capture and management.
With regard to the geographical data, there is a
great diversity of formats, mainly used by service
providers located at the upstream of the chain. However
it is possible to propose the definition of a simple
ASCII type format as a basic interchange format for
the transfer of data towards the downstream. The definition
of a common model will allow the geo-indicators and
other functionalities to be directly implemented in
the two prototypes within the framework of the WP5.
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