Like WCI President Cathy Garner, I found myself somewhat apprehensive when I agreed to actively participate in the event by giving a presentation at the invitation of the Romanian Farmers’ Club. Neither Cathy nor I had previously dealt specifically with the topic of agriculture in the context of discussions within the WCI, although Cathy has the advantage of coming from a farming family and having gained a genuine understanding of farming during her youth. I would describe my own experience in this regard as rather naive; it was shaped on the one hand by media reports on the European Union’s agricultural policy – after all, the agricultural fund accounts for the largest chunk of its budget – and, on the other hand, by first-hand observations of structural change in land and landscape management, particularly in mountainous terrain, where arable farming and livestock rearing are, at best, only viable with considerable technical effort.

I also fondly recall the anecdote from when, in my role as head of Austria’s largest research organisation, I welcomed the Duke of Liechtenstein – Austria’s largest forest owner – to our biology institute. He, being quite knowledgeable on the subject, wished to learn from us how genetic interventions, particularly in plants, especially trees, growing in alpine regions, could be used to halt soil erosion in these areas by promoting afforestation at high altitudes. For me, this was an early indication of the new specialist skills that will be required in the future for the management of challenging territories. Taking such thoughts further in the context of the current debate on artificial intelligence led to the idea of asking myself what might be devised in the specific case of envisioning *) a future agricultural policy for Romania.

In the presentation reproduced here, I have developed two theses:

1.The programme launched by the Farmers’ Club to introduce Agriculture 4.0 should not be seen as merely adding further current technologies – drones being a prime example – but should instead take the bold leap straight into the next phase, under the heading of Agriculture 5.0, in which, above all, new AI-related professions for and within the agricultural sector should be introduced.

2. An agricultural policy for a country such as Romania, given its highly differentiated and polarised agricultural structure between large-scale farms and millions of subsistence farms, requires a differentiated agricultural policy, which I propose should be structured into four distinct policy areas as follows and developed in a differentiated manner.

• • Large-scale, AI-founded precision farming in fertile plains provoking high productivity agriculture.

  • Traditional mixed farming maintained for biodiversity and tourism, thus caring for ecological-cultural landscapes.

  • Abandoned marginal areas returning to natural ecosystems, leading to rewildered or semi-wild land

  • Combining food production, energy generation, tourism management, carbon storage, and ecosystems services ending in multifunctional rual landscapes

For us as members of the WCI – who usually engage in highly intellectual and abstract discourse - being involved in this conference has had the wonderful effect of providing us with a range of new experiences and ‘down-to-earth’ insights. Let’s see what further discussions this leads to.

*) Looking back on my time as head of the Austrian Research Centers, I organised a think tank, the findings of which I published in a (German-language) book entitled “Visioning of Non-University Research in Austria”. This lineage also includes a second work, which I was explicitly commissioned to compile by the later Romanian Minister of Science, Adrian Curaj, and which bears the title “Designing the Landscape of the Intellectual Capital of a Nation”. This work was commissioned specifically for Romania.