Fermes Leader: an agricultural innovation network grounded in the field
Each year, new AgTech solutions emerge to address the challenges of performance, sustainability, or safety for farms. However, few innovations ultimately go beyond the concept stage or isolated testing.
The reason is well known: agricultural innovation is not validated solely in the laboratory. Without confronting real-world uses, the operational constraints of farms, and the expectations of cooperatives, the risk of misalignment is high.
The objective is not merely to “test for testing’s sake,” but to secure the development and adoption of truly useful, measurable, and adoptable innovations.
This article outlines how Fermes Leader connects cooperatives, startups, and agri-food companies around concrete projects, and illustrates this pragmatic approach through field projects conducted within the network.
Connecting Agricultural Stakeholders Around Concrete Projects
At Fermes Leader, agricultural innovation can emerge via:
- needs identified in the field, expressed by the farmers and cooperatives in the network,
- or AgTech solutions developed by startups, seeking field validation.
In all cases, the entry point remains the same: real utility for cooperatives and farms.
When the Need Comes from the Field
The expectations of farmers and cooperatives are gathered upstream based on issues observed on farms. This phase allows for the qualification of shared needs across the network and subsequently guides the search for relevant solutions, through monitoring, sourcing, and analysis activities.
When the Initiative Comes from AgTech Startups
It also happens that AgTech startups directly approach Fermes Leader to test their solutions in real-world conditions. In this case, an upstream qualification process is systematically carried out.
Before any experimentation, Fermes Leader evaluates:
- the solution’s alignment with the needs expressed by cooperatives,
- its level of maturity and its capacity to be tested in the field,
- its potential added value for the farmers in the network.
This filter helps avoid irrelevant or overly immature tests, and to preserve the time and commitment of farmers and cooperatives.
A Common Framework for Experimentation and Validation
Whether originating from the field or proposed by a startup, any selected solution then follows a common methodological framework: real-world experimentation, structured user feedback, usage analysis, and shared learnings with stakeholders.
identified need → qualification → experimentation field → evaluation → decision
This approach ensures that the innovation tested addresses concrete needs, and is part of a useful and realistic transformation logic for agriculture.
Test, Measure, Adjust: The Importance of Field Reality
In agricultural innovation, many projects fail not due to a lack of technological relevance, but for not having been sufficiently confronted with the realities of the field. Tests in controlled conditions, one-off demonstrators, or overly short POCs do not always allow for anticipating real uses, operational constraints, or barriers to adoption.
That is why Fermes Leader places field experimentation at the heart of its approach. Testing a solution in a real situation allows for evaluating its value far beyond the initial promise, and adjusting it before any broader deployment.
Why POCs Fail Without Field Testing
Without immersion in farms, several pitfalls quickly emerge:
- uses that do not correspond to existing agricultural practices,
- underestimated technical or organizational constraints,
- an additional burden for the farmer, hindering adoption.
Field testing of innovative solutions allows these limitations to be revealed very early on, where it is still possible to adjust the solution.
A Structured Evaluation Tool to Objectify Field Tests
To fully leverage the experimentation phases, Fermes Leader has developed a specific evaluation tool, designed to objectively analyze the real value of agricultural innovation tested in the field.
This tool allows for evaluating each solution according to several key criteria, directly derived from feedback from farmers and cooperatives:
- operability, that is, the solution’s ability to function effectively in real operating conditions;
- ease of use, essential to ensure user adoption;
- relevance, with regard to the issues identified in the field;
- perceived utility, measured through actual uses and concrete benefits for the farmer;
- profitability, understood as the balance between the gains provided and the necessary constraints or investments.
This analysis tool allows for moving beyond mere subjective feeling and to structure user feedback, in order to provide solution providers, as well as cooperatives and agri-food companies, with reliable and comparable decision-making elements.
The tool thus contributes to securing agricultural innovation, by ensuring that tested solutions meet clear operational criteria, validated by the field, before any broader deployment phase.
No useful innovation without field needs
No reliable decision without real testing
No value without adoption
Illustrating the Approach with a Field Project: The Example of Surus Connect
This way of approaching agricultural innovation is concretely reflected in the projects supported by Fermes Leader. Some of them very operationally illustrate the value of the network and the experimentation framework put in place.
The project conducted with Surus Connect aligns with this logic. The objective was to address a clearly identified need in the field: better preventing farmers’ work accidents, particularly when using agricultural machinery.
Thanks to the Fermes Leader network, the solution could be tested directly on farms, in real-world usage conditions. These experiments made it possible to:
- evaluate the integration of the solution into farmers’ daily lives,
- analyze its acceptability and ergonomics,
- gather field feedback to refine functionalities and uses.
Beyond the project itself, this example primarily illustrates Fermes Leader’s added value: creating the conditions for effective dialogue between technological innovation and agricultural reality, in order to bring forth truly useful, adapted, and adoptable solutions.
Learn more about Surus Connect
Innovating Effectively, at the Pace of the Agricultural Field
In a context where agricultural innovation is accelerating, the question is no longer just which technologies to develop, but how to make them truly useful and adoptable in the field. Experience shows that only an early confrontation with the uses, constraints, and expectations of farmers can achieve this.
By structuring the identification of needs, qualifying solutions, and framing their experimentation in real-world conditions, Fermes Leader plays a role as a facilitator and “securer” of agricultural innovation. The network thus allows startups, cooperatives, and agri-food companies to rely on objective field feedback to guide their decisions and projects.
Projects conducted within the network, such as the one with Surus Connect, illustrate this pragmatic approach: an innovation only has value if it addresses a real need, identified and validated by those who use it daily.
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👉 Are you leading an agricultural innovation project or an AgTech solution?
Whether your need comes from the field or you wish to confront an existing solution with the reality of farms, Fermes Leader supports you to test, evaluate, and secure your innovation approach, in direct connection with the farmers and cooperatives in the network.
