AGROTIKOS SYNETAIRISMOS POLISEOS XIRON KAI NOPON STAFYLION KIATOY KORINTHIAS PIGASOS

Their core work

Pegasus Agrifood Cooperative is a grape and raisin producers' cooperative based in Kiato, Corinthia — one of Greece's primary currant-producing regions. Their core business is growing, processing, and selling dried and fresh grapes to commercial markets. What makes them notable in an EU research context is their role as an active end-user testbed: they bring real, commercial farm operations into large-scale research pilots, validating smart farming and agricultural robotics technologies under genuine field conditions. They do not build technology — they test it, stress it, and provide the practical farmer's perspective that keeps research grounded in operational reality.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their H2020 trajectory tracks a practical farmer's journey through digital transformation. From 2017 to 2021, they focused on connectivity and data: IoT sensors, food chain visibility, precision farming dashboards, and business integration of farm data — the foundational layer of smart agriculture. By 2021, their attention shifted sharply toward physical automation: robots for weeding, digital twins for field supervision, and direct responses to labor scarcity. This is not a research pivot — it reflects what is happening on their farm. The data dependency has been established; now the question is whether machines can do the work that people increasingly cannot or will not do.

They are moving from digital monitoring toward physical automation, suggesting future collaboration interest in field robotics, autonomous weeding systems, and digital twin applications for permanent crops like vineyards.

How they like to work

Pegasus has participated in both projects as a partner, never as a coordinator — a pattern consistent with their profile as a farm operator rather than a research manager. Both projects they joined were large Innovation Actions with massive consortia, meaning they are comfortable working inside complex multi-partner structures even without a leadership role. Their value to a consortium is not in writing deliverables but in opening their fields: they provide the real-world context, the operational constraints, and the farmer's veto that separates workable technology from lab prototypes.

Their two projects have connected them to 101 unique consortium partners spanning 16 countries — a network far wider than most small cooperatives ever reach. This breadth is a direct consequence of joining large-scale IoT and robotics pilots that inherently attract pan-European consortia.

What sets them apart

In a sector dominated by universities, research institutes, and agri-tech startups, Pegasus offers something rare: an operational commercial farm willing to run real experiments at production scale. For any consortium developing precision farming, autonomous weeding, or food traceability technology, access to a functioning Greek vineyard and currant operation provides the kind of ground truth that no laboratory can replicate. Their Corinthia location also places them in a region with specific agronomic challenges — thin labor pools, Mediterranean climate variability, traditional crop systems — that are broadly representative of Southern European agriculture.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ROBS4CROPS
  Their highest-funded project (EUR 193,025) and most technically advanced engagement — deploying agricultural robots and digital twins on a live cooperative farm directly addresses the labor shortage crisis threatening Mediterranean agriculture.
• IoF2020
  One of the flagship Horizon 2020 IoT pilots for agri-food with over 20 use cases across Europe, making this cooperative part of a continent-wide benchmark for smart farming adoption among traditional farm operators.