Digitalization opens up numerous opportunities for municipalities to improve and control agricultural land use planning. It provides real-time data on soil quality and agricultural land use and helps to streamline administrative processes. In Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Montenegro, few of these opportunities are being harnessed. TeleGroup wanted to change this, so it adapted its AgroLIFE software to the needs of municipalities for data-supported planning and more ecologically sustainable land use. Together with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the company piloted the software in ten municipalities in the three countries. The project received funding under the develoPPP programme set up by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

In Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Montenegro, extensive areas of agricultural land are owned by the public sector and are leased to farmers by local authorities or the state. There are virtually no effective approaches to optimizing use with regard to soil fertility, crop protection, irrigation, and sustainable yield increases. There is a lack of both sufficient data material on agricultural land use and instruments for analyzing such data. This leads to lower productivity and hence to excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides, resulting in increasing soil degradation. This makes it more difficult to implement EU regulations in the agricultural sector as part of the EU accession process. TeleGroup has customized its AgroLIFE software to meet the specific needs of local authorities and, in Montenegro, to those of the Ministry of Agriculture, which is responsible for this area. The software now makes it possible to record cadastral data and data on the use of agricultural land in real time and to organize planning in a sustainable manner, while at the same time making administrative processes more efficient, such as regular reporting to the relevant ministries. The introduction of digital land use planning is still in its infancy in South-East Europe. TeleGroup is very interested in establishing itself in the region and with local authorities as a provider of efficient and reliable technology.

Project approach:
From 2019 to 2023, the following measures were implemented in ten municipalities with a financial volume of around 2.5 million euros; five Serbian municipalities already had basic land use planning software.
• Equipping the further five pilot municipalities with the software and establishing the information system in their administrative structure.
• Training administrative staff on the integration of land use data into the system and its use as an internet-based database.
• Training administrative staff to support farmers in using the system.
• Engaging in policy dialogue with the relevant ministries on establishing the system in municipalities on a needs-driven basis and initiating regional knowledge sharing.

Results:
Digitalization has improved transparency and efficiency in municipal land use planning. It has reduced administrative costs and simplified the municipalities’ accountability to the ministries of agriculture. The system laid the foundation for targeted extension services for farmers on key agricultural cultivation issues. As a result, productivity has increased, cultivation methods have become more sustainable, and natural resources can be better protected.
• Almost 800 farmers and 64 municipal employees were trained in digital land use management.
• Forecasts covering 117 plant diseases and pest infestations were modeled for 30 crops using a network of 73 weather stations.
• 73 weather stations collected a total of 12.8 million precisely localized data points to support farmers in their daily work.
• All participating municipalities optimized data collection and reporting to the ministries of agriculture, halved the processing time, and improved quality.