In 2022, a new event dedicated to artificial intelligence and data in agriculture took place in the Pays de la Loire Region. The West Data Festival, organized by the Laval Mayenne Technopole, is a festival dedicated to data in general, with a variety of topics such as business intelligence, cybersecurity, industry, and health. 

This year, two days will be dedicated to Artificial Intelligence and data in agriculture as this thematic has become predominant in the sector.

The first day took place on the 2^nd of February 2022. It was built around several interventions from professionals in the agriculture and tech sector on the following subjects:

Examples of application of Data and AI in agriculture and management of agricultural data, the contribution of numeric tools in the breeding sector, the changes in the agricultural advisor job due to the evolution of the monitoring systems and the use of data by farm machinery cooperatives.

This event is taking place in the Pays de la Loire Region. The Region Pays de la Loire being the co-coordinator of the SmartAgriHubs project in France with ACTA, was able to help the Laval Mayenne Technopole in the organization of this event.

The knowledge of the Agrifood Tech ecosystem helped the Region to give contact persons to the organizer. SmartAgriHubs was also represented during the West Data Festival with a specific booth to present the project and the AgriFarmLab FIE.

Following the 2^nd of February, a second day dedicated to AI and data in agriculture was organized on the 10^th of May 2022 in the form of a conference accessible to the general public.

On this occasion, Bertille Thareau, a researcher at the Ecole Superieur d’Agricultures (ESA) of Angers, presented the opportunities and potential risks of Agrifood Tech in agriculture for the related professions and the agricultural sector in general. Etienne Fourmont, farmer and Youtuber also presented his activities on social media.