The first CEADS Ecosystem Agora brought together more than 70 stakeholders from across the European agri-food sector to discuss the development of the CEADS. Inspired by the ancient concept of an “agora” as a place for dialogue and exchange, our event provided an open, non-recorded forum for sharing ideas, raising questions, and building a common understanding of the future agricultural data ecosystem.
The session focused on the CEADS big picture, covering its three main building blocks: the collaboration framework (governance, trust, and standards), shared federation services such as identity, authorization, interoperability, and catalogues, and the data-driven applications that will create value for agriculture and food systems.
The discussion highlighted strong interest in governance, interoperability, and federation models. Participants raised questions about semantic interoperability, controlled vocabularies, consent management across countries, support for businesses, and the division of responsibilities between CEADS and national data-sharing initiatives. A recurring message was that CEADS is being designed as a decentralized and federated ecosystem, where services, authority, and trust are distributed among participants rather than centralized in a single platform. Currently some of the topics are still in progress and we will come back to those later on.
The next Ecosystem Agora will take place on 10 December 2026 and will focus on business opportunities within CEADS.
