The Farm Sustainability Tool (FaST) is a core platform for the generation and re-use of solutions for sustainable and competitive agriculture. FaST will help lay the foundations of a comprehensive digital ecosystem for sustainable farm and land management in Europe. It will support farmers in their administrative decision-making processes, for farm profitability and environmental sustainability. At the same time, it will provide a reliable on-farm landing spot for digital solution developers (including satellite-based solutions) and service providers. It will reduce administrative burdens for farmers and Paying Agencies, and streamline communication between the farmers and public authorities.

The FaST digital service has been developed by the European Commission’s DG Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI), the EU Space Programme (DG DEFIS) and the EU ISA2 Programme (DG DIGIT) for the benefit of European farmers.

FaST incorporates space data (Copernicus and Galileo) and other public and private datasets. The modular design will support EU agriculture and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) by also enabling the use of solutions based on machine learning applied to image recognition, as well as the use and reuse of IoT data, various public sector data, and user-generated data.

The first version of the tool (v1.0) was made available to participating regions in March 2021. FaST has been deployed as a pilot project in four regions from three Member States (Italy-Piamonte; Estonia and Spain- Andalucía and Castilla y León).

This v1.0 mobile application embarks the following features in a user-friendly interface:

  • maps overlaying farm data on GIS layers;
  • Copernicus/Sentinel imagery;
  • campaign management with the import of IACS/GSAA farmer data;
  • fertilisation recommendations;
  • geo-tagged photos;
  • two-way communications:
  • basic weather/climate.

FaST comprises a mobile and web application for farmers and farm advisors. The platform also provides an Administration Portal where the Paying Agency can access the regional data and configure the system to the local specificities.