The digital farm will be owned by the Smart Village cooperative and will be used for agricultural production. On the other hand, it is a demonstration good – an educational tool where researchers from public universities, institutes, students of agricultural schools from the Republic of Srpska, students of agricultural faculties, but also farmers themselves learn about the implementation of modern technologies. In addition to its physical part, the Digital Farm will have its own virtual part as part of the smart village platform.
Modern agriculture is facing a number of challenges, primarily the impact of climate change (unpredictability of atmospheric movements, temperature extremes), declining quality of arable agricultural land (loss of humus layer, deterioration of soil mechanical characteristics, destruction of soil biodiversity) and long-term scarcity of resources used in conventional agricultural production (mineral fertilizers, fuel for agricultural machinery and other products of the petrochemical industry).
In addition to the mentioned negative effects, which have a global impact, there are additional problems in the area of Podkozarje. First of all, out-dated technological approach to agricultural production (production technology dates back to the late 1980s), poor education of the agricultural population, low level of economic viability of existing agricultural production, low environmental awareness, drastic deagrarization.
Although it is globally recognized that these factors are a problem and that many activities have been launched to reduce the negative effects, it is necessary to implement these initiatives at the local level to raise awareness of domestic farmers about these problems and directly show possible solutions. Also, although there are a number of problems, a great opportunity for faster and more efficient solutions can be provided to us with the application of IT innovations in agriculture.
Taking into account all the above mentioned, the establishment of the Digital Farm as a development demonstration space, within the Smart Village Knežica, will enable on-site testing of various ideas or innovative solutions in certain areas of agricultural production in order to bring them closer to the farmers.
The area of Podkozarje is characterized by extremely heterogeneous agricultural production (field crop production, vegetables, fruit growing and livestock), which is another additional challenge in the concept of digital farm development. This heterogeneity will also have to be present in the Digital Farm itself in order to offer as many ideas and solutions as possible to local farmers.
