Farming is already a complex job. For producers working in short food supply chains, however, growing food may be only part of it. “On top of being farmers, they also have to be salespeople, logistics experts, administrators and accountants,” explains Alejandro Wonenburger García, co-founder and general coordinator of Plant on demand (pod), a Spanish digital platform designed for short food supply chains. “They need to find clients, sell and deliver their products, manage invoices and payments, deal with regulations and taxes, and ensure traceability throughout the food supply chain.”
Jorge Molero Cortés knows the problem from both sides. An agricultural engineer and project manager at NGO Entretantos, he coordinates the Spanish living lab of EU4Advice, a sister project of COREnet working on advisory services for short food supply chains. But he also spent eight years as a farmer and helped create a cooperative in the Sierra Nevada. “As they say in France, la vente en circuit court est un triple métier,” he says. “You are a farmer, but you also have to manage logistics and sell and market your products. And many farmers simply don’t have all these different skills.”
Digitalisation offers an obvious way of taking some of that burden off their shoulders. Orders can be centralised, invoices automated, deliveries organised and traceability simplified. But the experience of those developing - and using - these tools suggests that technology works only when it starts with the right problem.

When technology meets reality

When Wonenburger and his colleagues started developing the digital platform Plant on demand almost ten years ago, they had much more sophisticated technology in mind. “Our initial idea was actually to build an AI product,” he recalls. Using predictive algorithms and data on demand, land and weather conditions, the idea was to help farmers optimise production and reduce food waste. Then they started talking to farmers. “We realised that this was not their problem at all - or it was the smallest of their problems. They were receiving orders by phone, email and WhatsApp, writing them down on pieces of paper, creating invoices with Word or Excel, and struggling to keep track of payments. It was a big mess.” Before doing anything data-driven, Wonenburger realised, they first had to help farmers bring those basic processes and the information they generated under control.
The experience of Valle y Vega shows the same problem from the opposite direction. Created from the merger of two associations, the Spanish agroecological cooperative Molero helped establish suddenly had to manage invoicing, traceability and orders across channels ranging from an online and physical shop to farmers’ markets, restaurants and school canteens. Its first attempt at digitalisation did not go well. “We chose a German software program thinking it would cover all our needs, but in the end, it wasn't quite what we expected,” recalls worker-member Noemí Pezuela Pérez. “The software was designed for a company very similar to ours, putting together basket orders for individual customers, but tax and invoicing rules in Germany and Spain don't work the same way. Because of that, on top of dealing with translations, we weren't able to automate our day-to-day operations as much as we would have liked.”
For Molero, these experiences point to a distinction that is easily lost amid enthusiasm about agricultural technology. “It’s neither a magic solution nor a false promise,” he cautions. “But for many farmers, particularly those with limited resources and those working in short food supply chains, technology alone is not necessarily the way to become more competitive or make a better living.”

Technology as an amplifier. For better or worse

The question, then, is not simply whether, but what and when to digitalise. “Technology can amplify what works, but it can also amplify what doesn’t,” Molero argues, borrowing a famous principle from business process reengineering: “Automating a mess produces an automated mess.” A digital purchasing system, for example, achieves little if ordering remains complicated for customers or creates extra work for farmers. The same principle underpins Toyota’s lean production approach: improve and simplify processes before reaching for another technological solution. “First you have to think: how are you going to do things easily? And then find or develop software that can help you do that,” he continues. “The problem is that organisations often digitalise existing ways of working without first asking whether those processes should be simplified or changed.”
That logic has also shaped Plant on Demand. Rather than designing a tool and asking farmers to adapt to it, pod has evolved through continuous feedback from its users, Wonenburger explains. “We basically co-designed the platform with this initial group of producers. Then, as new farmers started using it, they kept giving us feedback and ideas about what to improve and what changes to make.”
Valle y Vega eventually followed a similar path. After abandoning its first software, the cooperative adopted a simpler system that covered its basic needs and was progressively adapted as the organisation grew. The difference can sometimes be measured in something as mundane as a keystroke. Workers used to weigh products for each customer’s order, record the figures on paper and later enter them into a computer. “Now, we simply press F12,” Pezuela says, “and the system records the weight of the apples or whatever other product we’re preparing.”

A doctor, not a pill: diagnosing before prescribing

But identifying the right tool - and understanding whether a tool is needed at all - is not necessarily easy for producers already juggling several jobs. This is precisely where advisory services can play a role - and why strengthening them is a central focus of COREnet and other European initiatives. “The first thing an advisor has to do is ‘read’ the operation: understand how the whole business works before giving any kind of advice,” Molero explains. That means looking at how products are sold, how work is organised and where the actual bottlenecks lie before deciding whether technology belongs in the solution.
Wonenburger describes a similar process when producers join pod. “The first thing we do is a quick audit of their business operations. We analyse how they work, where they are starting from and where technology can actually help them.” There is no standard prescription. “One of the big mistakes in consulting and advising is starting from the idea: ‘I have the right answer. I have the right solution,’” he warns. “Maybe you do, but you cannot apply it in the same way to everyone.”
“It’s like going to the doctor with a headache,” says Molero. “A good doctor doesn’t immediately give you a pill. They first try to understand what is causing it. Digitalisation can sometimes be like that pill: it may treat the symptom without addressing the real problem. It should come last, not first.”

Think smaller for bigger change

Even the right diagnosis, however, does not make all the obstacles disappear. Cost matters, and so does digital literacy, for instance. A tool that requires skills producers do not have takes too long to learn or costs more than the value it generates can simply create a new burden. But there is also a more structural problem: much agricultural technology was not designed with small producers in mind.
“There is a gap to fill, 100%,” Wonenburger stresses. Developing technology for small farmers and short food supply chains is less profitable than doing so for larger companies with greater purchasing power. As a result, tools designed for industrial-scale agriculture can become “overkill” for smaller operations: “You end up with a very complex product with 300 buttons when you only need 50.”
Molero points to the same mismatch. Software for a large cooperative bringing together thousands of farmers producing a handful of crops is relatively straightforward to standardise. Short food supply chains may instead bring together fewer producers, many products and very different ways of working - precisely the diversity that makes one-size-fits-all solutions difficult.
For Pezuela, the threshold is ultimately practical. A cooperative selling potatoes, garlic and onions has very different needs from one managing 2,000 products. Once the number of suppliers, products and transactions grows, the initial investment in digitalisation can quickly pay for itself. But the tool has to match the scale and complexity of the operation.
Which brings Wonenburger back to where Plant on demand began almost ten years ago - and to what came before its ambitions for AI. “We should focus much more on the fundamentals before jumping into very sophisticated solutions,” he argues. “Otherwise, it’s a bit like building a house without laying its foundations.”
For small producers, those foundations can be decidedly unglamorous: knowing where money comes from and where it goes, understanding margins, managing products, orders and invoices, and organising daily work efficiently.
Getting those foundations right does not, however, lead to a universal formula. “There is no ultimate recipe for making digitalisation work in short food supply chains,” Molero acknowledges. “Technology? Yes, of course. Digitalisation? Yes, of course. But not like taking pills without treating the real problem.”
Instead, the starting point is to understand the product, the customers and the processes - and keep asking what the real problem actually is. Only then, “find the right tool for the right problem,” he concludes.

Article by Diego Giuliani

Featured image credits
In-text image credits

Contributors:

Alejandro Wonenburger García
Jorge Molero Cortés
Noemí Pezuela Pérez

Contacts:

Project coordinator:
Gianluigi De Pascale
gianluigi.depascale@unifg.it
University of Foggia

Communication Manager:
Leonardo Improta
leonardo.improta@icons.it
Fondazione ICONS

Project website: https://shortfoodchain.eu/
Facebook: COREnet
LinkedIn: COREnet