Announcement: the AgriFood4Future Lighthouse Farm Visit of Cove France to be held on 4 June 2026 at Grignon Farm

AgroParisTech’s experimental farm in Grignon will host the AgriFood4Future Lighthouse Grignon Farm visit on 4 June 2026. The event will be integrated into the third edition of the farm’s Agricultural Innovation Days (Journées de l’Innovation Agricole), which bring together a wide audience of farmers, professionals, companies, students and researchers.
This joint organisation will ensure a large and diverse attendance and will make it possible to offer a consistent set of demonstrations and exchanges on agronomic, energy-related and digital innovations.

The farm welcomes around 25,000 visitors each year, including school groups, students and professionals. The farm teams regularly organise visits, demonstrations and technical events, and have extensive experience in preparing and managing public activities. The Grignon farm shop sells products from the farm and from other agricultural schools, illustrating local value chains and the link between production and training.

Representative and monitored production units supporting research in agroecology and digital agriculture

The Grignon farm encompasses a consistent set of animal, crop and energy production units. The dairy unit (190 dairy cows, 300 heifers) produces around 1.85 million litres of milk per year, part of which is processed on site, while the sheep unit (650 ewes, 1,300 lambs per year) carries out structured genetic selection work for meat production. Two hundred hectares of forage crops and grasslands supply the herds under operational and monitored production conditions. Another approximately 200 hectares of cash crops supply the wheat, barley, rapeseed and beet markets.

Alongside these productive areas, the farm hosts the experimental agronomic platform Trajectoire, consisting of seven one-hectare strips dedicated to contrasting cropping systems and crop management practices. This platform has a strictly experimental purpose: it allows different combinations of practices to be tested and their agronomic and environmental effects to be measured.

The energy systems complement the ensemble. The anaerobic digester converts livestock effluent and agricultural byproducts into biomethane, which is then injected into the grid. The digestate is used as fertiliser. The photovoltaic installation also contributes to renewable energy generation. Together, these units enable structured monitoring of material, energy and nutrient flows, providing a documented basis for analysing circularity and environmental impacts.

Data from these different units support research and modelling activities. In particular, they contribute to TwinFarms (a project funded by the French National Research Agency), which uses real farm data to develop digital twins of agricultural systems and simulate management scenarios, exploring different technical and environmental trajectories suitable for agroecological transition.

An environment designed for experimentation and innovation in partnership with professionals

The farm hosts several research, training and innovation facilities developed in close collaboration with professional stakeholders. The Farm’InnLab enables companies and start-ups to test solutions under real-world conditions, drawing on the expertise of the farm’s teams and AgroParisTech researchers, and maintaining regular exchanges with end-users.
The Alliance Méthanisation Agricole chair, a sponsorship chair dedicated to research, education and communication on the sustainable development of methanization, and other technical facilities on the site also contribute to these collaborations, providing dedicated spaces for studying agricultural practices, energy processes and field-based questions identified with partners.

This environment supports the articulation of agricultural production, technical trials, prototype development, data acquisition and knowledge transfer, in a logic of innovation co-constructed with sector stakeholders.

AgriFood4Future and the AgroParisTech Summer School

Research activities on the farm provide students with training and help them to develop cross-cutting skills, knowledge and capacities in the areas of bio-energies, digitalisation, the agroecological transition and innovation. Every year, 1,800 students of AgroParisTech come on the farm for visits, workshops, and hands-on events.

On 3 June 2026, the inaugural session of the AgroParisTech Summer School 2026 will take place at the Grignon Farm and will consist in presenting the farm’s activities. It will host international students who may be associated with the AgriFood4Future dynamic. Internships will be offered to international students at the farm on topics related to agrivoltaics and modelling ammonia emissions, in line with the project’s objectives.
This activity will reinforce the farm’s training, experimentation and knowledge-sharing dynamics for 2026.

The joint organisation of AgriFood4Future Lighthouse Farm Visit 2026 with the “Journées de l’innovation Agricole” at the Grignon Farm provides conditions for observing practices in real situations and discussing their implementation with a large and diverse audience, in line with the objectives of AgriFood4Future.