OpenAgri in Horizon Magazine: How Open Source Builds Farmers' Trust in Digital Tools
OpenAgri is featured in Horizon Magazine, the EU Research and Innovation Magazine, in an article on how open-source technology can help farmers put more trust in digital tools. Published on 17 September 2026, the piece looks at why farmers are cautious about new technology and how OpenAgri is answering that with evidence from real farms.
Trust Built on Real-World Evidence
Farmers are willing to innovate, but they need to see that a tool works in conditions they recognise. The article shows how OpenAgri responds with open-source, interoperable services for weather information, irrigation, pest and disease risk, farm records and reporting. Project coordinator Christopher Brewster of Maastricht University compares the approach to Lego: components that can be combined, swapped and reused, so smaller companies and start-ups do not have to build everything from scratch.
The article also highlights the OpenAgri Decision Support Tool, a free web app in beta. It lets farmers, advisers and policymakers compare digital solutions on practical factors such as performance with poor connectivity, energy use, running costs and reliability. The evidence behind it comes from 14 pilots across Europe, including a Greek vineyard where a camera detects leaf disease and researchers compare processing images on site versus in the cloud.
An Open Community Beyond the Project
Horizon Magazine also covers OpenAgri’s catalogue of around 150 open-source solutions and its services now hosted with AgStack, the Linux Foundation’s open-source agriculture initiative. The article notes that the long-term challenge is keeping that community active after EU funding ends, and links the work to the wider Common European Agricultural Data Space.
Read the Full Article
To learn more about how OpenAgri is helping farmers make informed, evidence-based choices about digital tools, read the full article in Horizon Magazine: Open source tech helps farmers put more trust in digital tools.
You can also try the OpenAgri Decision Support Tool and explore our services in the OpenAgri Open-Source Catalogue.