Earlier this month, the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) Summit 2026 hosted a standout workshop that brought together farmers, researchers, policymakers, and technology developers to tackle one of the less-discussed challenges in modern agriculture: data sharing.
Organised by doctoral researchers from the EnTrust Marie Sklodowska-Curie Doctoral Network at Maynooth University, the two-hour session -- "From Fields to Data Spaces: Unlocking Agricultural Data Sharing" -- featured four expert presentations and a panel discussion covering the state of agricultural data spaces in Europe.
What Is an Agricultural Data Space?
The concept of a data space sits somewhere between a data exchange and a governance framework. Rather than centralising data in a single platform, a data space allows participants to share data on their own terms, with agreed rules around access, sovereignty, and purpose. For agriculture, where data flows between farmers, processors, government bodies, and sustainability platforms, this kind of structured sharing has obvious appeal.
Helmut Vossmann, IDSA ambassador for the farm and food community, opened the session by mapping the need for agricultural data and the fundamental pillars any data space must have to connect an entire ecosystem -- from field-level sensors to food production ERP systems.
Irish Agriculture and the Sustainability Challenge
Dr Natasha Browne of Teagasc presented AgNav, a digital sustainability platform for Irish farmers developed in partnership with the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) and Bord Bia. Her talk focused on the governance challenges in a complex data ecosystem: who owns the data, who can access it, and under what conditions. AgNav is also part of the CEADS (Common European Agricultural Data Space) project, giving it a direct line into EU-level data governance thinking.
The Technology Gap
Dr Rafiqul Haque from the Data Space Support Centre (DSSC) -- an EU-funded project co-led from the Insight SFI Research Centre at the University of Galway -- gave a frank assessment of where data space technologies currently stand. The short version: promising architecture, immature implementation. His presentation covered design principles and technical building blocks, while being clear about what the agricultural sector cannot yet rely on.
Senadin Alisic, senior strategy advisor and enterprise architect, rounded out the presentations with a broader systems perspective, drawing on experience across smart cities, industrial digitalisation, and defence. His talk examined what makes a data ecosystem genuinely resilient, and where agriculture sits differently from other sectors.
What the Panel Concluded
The panel discussion was structured around four themes: agricultural specificity, sovereign and FAIR data spaces, power asymmetries and commercialisation, and governance. Several conclusions stood out:
- Data space technologies have not yet reached maturity
- Cross-data-space interoperability remains a significant unsolved challenge
- Not all stakeholders have either the incentive or the organisational readiness to participate
- Current data spaces cannot offer monetisation or benefit-sharing to members
- New cost models are needed to lower the barriers to entry for smaller operators
The governance point carried particular weight: without a clear framework that creates trust, enforceability, and clarity of purpose, a data space is just infrastructure with no agreement on how to use it.
Why It Matters
Agricultural data sharing is not a niche topic. It sits at the intersection of climate action, food security, EU regulatory compliance, and rural economic development. The EnTrust network -- training a new generation of data executives specifically in agri-data management -- is doing useful work in keeping this conversation grounded in both the practical and the policy dimensions.
The full event report is available to download here.