Twinfarms: digital twins to facilitate innovation
March 21 2025Winner of a call for projects from the national research program Agroecology and Digital, the Twinfarms project began in February 2025. Co-managed by INRAE and Inria, supported by a large consortium of partners and co-coordinated by the Alliance H@rvest sponsorship chair of the AgroParisTech Foundation and ACTA, the Twinfarms project aims to deploy nine digital twin demonstrators to promote agroecological innovation.
What is a digital twin?
An agricultural digital twin consists of a virtual representation of a real agricultural system that simulates in real time the complex interactions of these systems with their environment thanks to sensors and external data (meteorological, soil, crop, etc.) to enable the adoption of more sustainable practices. The applications are numerous:
- Decision support to facilitate information analysis, predict developments and produce recommendations
- Scenario evaluation to test the impacts of changes in different practices before they are implemented in the field
- Promoting agroecological transition to integrate the challenges of climate change and enable economic and environmental issues, quality of life at work and food security to be taken into account by farmers and policy makers.
Representing the diversity of agricultural systems
The project will be supported by nine demonstrators located throughout France. These demonstrators will enable simulations to be carried out at different spatial and temporal scales. The digital twins should provide added value to facilitate tactical and strategic choices in a context of agroecological transition. The construction of digital twins of these demonstrators should enable the emergence of generic components useful for future developments.
A collective digital project in the service of agroecological transition
The Twinfarms project will last 48 months and is supported by a large consortium of complementary partners from the research, education and private sectors. The initiative also mobilizes a multidisciplinary team of around 40 people: teacher-researchers, engineers, technicians, doctoral students, and project, training and communication managers.
This collaborative approach brings together skills in mathematics, computer science, agronomy, ecology, soil biology and animal husbandry to build digital tools for agroecological transition.