On 11 February 2026, FARMWISE partners and regional stakeholders gathered in Lund, Sweden, for a full-day exchange focused on two of the most pressing challenges facing European agriculture: water management and soil health under climate extremes.
Hosted by Lund University, the event brought research, farming practice, technology providers and regional expertise into the same room: which is exactly the kind of co-creation environment FARMWISE is designed to foster
Watch the highlights on YouTube here
Why FARMWISE Organises Stakeholder Events
FARMWISE is not developing tools in isolation. The project’s core ambition is to transform agricultural resource management by combining AI, remote sensing, precision agriculture and water expertise into decision-support systems that work in real-world settings.
To do that, farmers, advisors, technology companies, researchers and policymakers must test ideas together.
Stakeholder events like the Lund workshop serve to:
• Validate FARMWISE tools against real operational needs
• Connect regional case studies across Europe
• Stress-test innovations under different climatic and regulatory contexts
• Explore scalability and upscaling potential
• Identify risks, opportunities and desired futures
In short, they turn research outputs into grounded, applicable solutions.
The Gårdstånga Nygård Case: How and Why It Started
The day opened with a welcome from Gustaf Ramel, introducing the Gårdstånga Nygård case: one of FARMWISE’s Swedish demonstration sites.
Gårdstånga Nygård (located near Flyinge in Skåne) represents a real, working agricultural environment where water management, irrigation efficiency and soil resilience are not theoretical concepts but daily operational decisions. AB Gårdstånga Nygård is a beneficiary in the FARMWISE consortium, ensuring direct farmer involvement in tool development and validation
The case illustrates how:
• Climate variability is already affecting irrigation decisions in southern Sweden
• Both excess water and drought periods create operational uncertainty
• Farm-level data must connect to basin-level water management
The question posed at the start of the day – “How and why did it all start?” – anchored discussions in lived experience rather than abstraction.
“Too Much Water / Too Little Water”
One of the most powerful sessions compared irrigation challenges across Europe. Short perspectives from the Bologna and Murcia case studies highlighted the paradox increasingly faced by European farmers:
• Flood risk and drainage challenges in some regions
• Severe drought and water scarcity in others
• Increasing unpredictability in seasonal water availability
By placing Skåne in conversation with southern Europe, the workshop reinforced a core FARMWISE principle: local solutions must sit within a European systems perspective
FARMWISE Innovations in Practice
Researchers and partners from Lund University and beyond delivered rapid pitches on FARMWISE tools and solutions, focusing specifically on:
• Scalability
• Upscaling potential
• Integration across water, soil and nutrient management
Contributors included:
• Ronny Berndtsson (Lund University)
• Maria Martinez Canovas (Agrodit)
• Magnus Persson (LU)
• Hossein Hashemi (LU)
• Iria Feijoo (LU)
• Jing Li (LU)
The emphasis was not only on technical performance, but on how decision-support systems can meaningfully support farmers and policymakers under real constraints.
Industry and Academic Perspectives
The coffee break became an informal demonstration space, with irrigation manufacturer Lyckegård showcasing machinery and engaging directly with researchers and farmers.
The programme then moved into soil health:
• Professor Jennie Barron (SLU Ulltuna) addressed agricultural water management
• Professor emeritus Håkan Wallander explored soil ecological processes
• Professor Lennart Olsson provided broader perspectives
• Letavis’ Gustav Nadal posed a provocative question:
Can a biostimulant increase harvest sufficiently to reduce irrigation demand?
Together, these sessions linked water management with soil biology, nutrient cycling and yield outcomes: reinforcing the interconnected systems approach at the heart of FARMWISE
From Case Study to Scalable Impact
The Lund stakeholder event demonstrated how FARMWISE connects:
• Farm-level practice (Gårdstånga Nygård)
• Regional water management
• European case study comparison
• AI-enabled decision-support systems
• Soil health innovation
• Industry engagement
By bringing quadruple helix stakeholders together: researchers, farmers, companies and policymakers: FARMWISE strengthens the pathway from research innovation to practical implementation.
To conclude, as climate pressures intensify, events like this ensure that FARMWISE solutions are not only scientifically robust, but operationally realistic and socially grounded.
Watch the highlights on YouTube here
