The European Space Agency has a number of calls that may be of interest to the agri-tech community:
Lunar Economy Applications
Enabling study competition; closes 8th Janaury 2024
Teams of space agencies and private organisations across the globe plan to return to the Moon. Many of the proposed lunar missions will require reliable navigation and telecommunication capabilities. Building these capabilities independently would be inefficient and costly due to complex, recurrent developments.
One area in scope for this call is food & waste management – food production and the effective management of scarce resources contribute to enabling a human presence on the Moon and support life. The offer includes zero-equity funding of up to 200,000 Euro per study, and access to the network of partners. Find out more and apply.
The Sustainable Transformation of Agriculture Through Digitalisation and Space
Call for demonstration projects proposals (Non-Competitive); Closing date 13th December 2023
The main objective of the Thematic Call for Proposals for Applications Activities in “The sustainable transformation of agriculture through digitalisation and space” is to develop space-based services and applications boosting the sustainable transformation of agriculture by taking advantage of data and innovative technologies.
This Thematic Call for Proposals is intended to support industry in the development of services focused on the optimisation of agricultural practices that minimise negative environmental impacts in terms of soil degradation, water depletion and contamination, inefficient energy use and loss of biodiversity. Relevant topics include agriculture of data and climate-smart agriculture. Find out more and apply.
Space for a Wasteless Food Supply Chain
Competitive call for kick-start activities; Closing date 1st February 2024
This opportunity provides funding to European teams who would like to develop a service related to halving waste through the food supply chain. Funding will be provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) for 6-month projects called ‘Kick-Starts’, which can lead to larger scale Demonstration Projects and Feasibility Studies. Kick-Starts are 75% funded by ESA up to a maximum of €60K per contract. Proposed services must use satellite data or space-based technologies. The call for this scope includes consumer behaviour, recycling, and food production and distribution. Find out more and apply.
This post originally appeared on TechToday.