On March 25, 2026, Sjaak Wolfert, CEADS’s scientific coordinator shared his reflections on the Data Sharing Festival 2026 in a LinkedIn blog post. Read the full post below for his insights and key takeaways!
Last week’s Data Sharing Festival 2026 in Rotterdam made one thing clear: Europe is shifting from ideas to real implementation when it comes to data spaces, and agriculture stands to benefit more than ever.
With “Sovereignty: From Principle to Practice” as the central theme, keynote sessions from the European Commission, TNO, Digital Holland and the Centre of Excellence for Data Sharing & Cloud highlighted the urgent need for trusted, interoperable and scalable data sharing infrastructures across sectors. These discussions directly shape the roadmap for the CEADS – Common European Agricultural Data Space
1. Strategic Context: Data Sovereignty as the Central Theme
The festival revolved around the theme “Sovereignty: From Principle to Practice” — calling for Europe to translate digital sovereignty concepts into real‑world adoption, scaling, and governance frameworks. This framing is central to CEADS, which aims to give the agricultural ecosystem (farmers, cooperatives, certifiers, agri‑tech, regulators) trusted, interoperable and sovereign control over shared data.
Keynotes from national ministries, TNO, Digital Holland and the European Commission focused on:
- accelerating European data spaces,
- strengthening national digital infrastructure,
- aligning governance, semantics and cloud capabilities, and
- reducing fragmentation across sectors.
These are directly relevant to CEADS, which will need to integrate cross‑border governance, shared standards, and sovereign cloud infrastructure to operate effectively.
2. Lessons From DSSC Blueprint 3.0 and SIMPL
The Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC) shared updates on Blueprint 3.0, including governance templates, interoperability guidelines, and machine‑readable rulebooks. The European Commission also presented SIMPL, the data‑sharing middleware designed to support Common EU Data Spaces, including agriculture.
These provide CEADS with:
- A baseline architecture and reference governance model.
- Reusable building blocks for identity, consent, trust frameworks, and federation.
- A roadmap aligned with other sectors (health, industry, mobility).
Critically, SIMPL is expected to support live implementations of Common Data Spaces in 2026, including agriculture accelerating CEADS deployment timelines.
3. Multi‑Sector Momentum: Agriculture Emerging as a Key Use Case
Although cross‑sectoral by design, the festival revealed growing interest in agri-food as a high‑impact domain for data‑sharing innovation. Use cases presented during breakout sessions included:
- TRACK: emissions & footprint tracking across agricultural supply chains.
- “De eerste duurzame generatie”: consumer‑facing sustainability insights.
- TOFF: trusted data sharing in open‑field farming with Cumela and VAA.
- Collaborative agrifood pilots with AgroCare, Greenpack and GreenlingData.
Agri-food’s visibility at the festival reflects a broader trend: regulatory pressure (CSRD, SBTi, PEFCR) and sustainability reporting requirements are making data‑driven supply chains unavoidable in the agri-food system.
CEADS will position itself as the shared infrastructure enabling these compliance-driven and value‑creation use cases.
4. Financing & Scaling: Overcoming the “DSI Funding Gap”
One of the strongest themes from the event was the financing gap facing Data Sharing Initiatives (DSIs). Sessions led by Brainport Industries, Edu‑V, ABYKYS, and TNO Vector reinforced that moving from pilot to scale requires hybrid funding models, including:
- Long-term public funding
- De-risking investments
- Intermediary-led financing (e.g., trade organisations)
- Memberships / subscription models
- Transaction-based pricing
The official agenda emphasised a major session on “Bridging the financing gap for data sharing initiatives”, featuring Gijs van Houwelingen, Trudy de Jong and Dennis Groot, directly addressing this structural challenge.
For CEADS, this is critical. Farmers and SMEs have low margins, making purely commercial funding unrealistic. A sustainable CEADS should consider:
- EU-level multi-year funding through Digital Europe/CAP
- Co-financing by Member States
- Sector intermediaries (co-ops, advisory services) as distribution channels
- Value‑based pricing for high‑value, downstream use cases
5. Interoperability: MAMI, Standards & the UN Transparency Protocol
Several sessions focused on interoperability, the greatest barrier to cross‑sector and cross‑border scaling:
- MAMI framework: minimal agreements for maximum interoperability
- CEN/CENELEC & ETSI DCAT harmonised standards
- UN Transparency Protocol (UNTP) for global value chains
The agenda confirms deep focus on standardisation and data‑driven supply chain transparency in both keynote sessions and breakout tracks on Day 2.
For CEADS, interoperability should be:
- a non‑negotiable design constraint, not an afterthought.
- built on aligned semantics for soil, crop, livestock, and environmental data.
- harmonised with upstream/downstream sectors (food processing, logistics, retail).
A CEADS that is fully interoperable with other EU data spaces (Supply Chain, Mobility, Green Deal Data Space) will unlock multi‑sector value.
6. Privacy‑Enhancing Technologies & Digital Product Passports (DPP)
Day 2 of the festival focused on:
- Privacy‑Enhancing Technologies (PETs)
- Digital Product Passports (DPPs)
- Traceability frameworks
The agenda highlights DPP as a core theme, with dedicated tracks throughout the day. These innovations are highly relevant to CEADS:
- PETs (federated learning, encrypted processing, synthetic data) help address farmer concerns about data misuse.
- DPPs are likely to become mandatory across agri-food chains for sustainability claims, carbon reporting, and supply‑chain data.
- CEADS could become the backbone for agricultural product passports, linking farm‑level data to regulatory and market requirements.
7. Implications for CEADS
Based on the festival insights, CEADS should prioritise five strategic actions:
1. Align with DSSC & SIMPL as core technical and governance foundations
This ensures CEADS is interoperable with all other EU data spaces from day one.
2. Position CEADS as the backbone for agricultural sustainability compliance
With CSRD, SBTi, and PEFCR driving data demand, CEADS can become Europe’s trusted infrastructure for verified environmental data.
3. Build hybrid, multi-layered funding models
Long-term public investment + sector intermediary revenue models + value‑based pricing.
4. Integrate PETs to ensure farmer trust and compliance with GDPR & sovereignty principles
Farmer control and transparent usage logs should be core features.
5. Adopt MAMI-style minimal agreements for interoperability
To accommodate the diversity of agricultural technologies, OEMs, and national data platforms.
8. Executive Conclusion
The Data Sharing Festival 2026 demonstrated unmistakably that Europe is moving from concepts to implementation in data spaces. For CEADS, this means the ecosystem, governance frameworks, funding mechanisms, and technical building blocks are all maturing simultaneously.
CEADS can now move forward with confidence, leveraging:
- European interoperability frameworks (DSSC, SIMPL)
- Sector precedents (health, manufacturing, logistics)
- Policy momentum on sovereignty
- Regulatory drivers for sustainable agri‑food systems
If designed strategically, CEADS could become:
- the first fully operational, cross‑border, multi‑value‑chain data space,
- a role model for other domains,
- and a core enabler of Europe’s green and digital transformation.
Trust in data, growth in agriculture!
