There is a topic that shows up in almost every conversation with olive growers across the Mediterranean these days: the digital farm logbook. And it almost always arrives wrapped in confusion.
“They told me it’s mandatory from January.” “No, that’s been postponed.” “But the phytosanitary record is, isn’t it?” “Depends which country and which region.”
It is understandable. The rules have changed more than once, the deadlines have moved — the last time at the end of October 2025, when the European Commission decided to grant an extra year — and the information circulating in the sector mixes what is already mandatory with what will be. This article is an attempt to put things in order, from a European perspective and with a particular eye on the two countries that together produce the majority of the world’s olive oil: Spain and Italy.
What a digital farm logbook actually is
A digital farm logbook is the electronic replacement for the traditional paper field notebook. It is where a farmer records the operations carried out on the farm: phytosanitary treatments, fertilisation, irrigation, cultivation tasks. In essence, it is the clinical history of every parcel of land you manage.
The difference between digital and paper isn’t just the format. A digital logbook is connected to public databases and allows the administration to access information automatically. What used to require an on-site inspection can now be verified remotely. Records that used to sit in a filing cabinet now flow, in standardised formats, into national and European data systems.
Each EU Member State implements the logbook within its own administrative framework. In Spain it is called the Cuaderno Digital de Explotación (CUE), regulated by Royal Decree 1054/2022 and integrated into the SIEX (Sistema de Información de Explotaciones) national database. In Italy it is called the Quaderno di Campagna Digitale Aziendale (QDCA), integrated into the Fascicolo Aziendale and managed through SIAN (Sistema Informativo Agricolo Nazionale). Different names, same direction of travel.
The real timeline: what is mandatory and when
This is where most of the confusion starts. The timeline was modified twice in 2025. Here is where things actually stand today.
First turn — Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/564. This is the European mother regulation that originally established the obligation to transfer phytosanitary product records held by professional users into electronic format from 1 January 2026. Every Member State was gearing up for that deadline.
Second turn — Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2203, of 31 October 2025. This is the change that many olive growers still don’t know about. The European Commission, faced with the real situation on the ground across Member States, amended Regulation 2023/564 and authorised Member States to keep phytosanitary records on paper throughout 2026 and to postpone the electronic record obligation to 1 January 2027. Both Spain and Italy — along with most other Member States — chose to use that flexibility.
Translated into what this means in practice for an olive grower in 2026:
Throughout 2026: There is no obligation to keep the digital farm logbook in electronic format. There is no obligation to register phytosanitary treatments electronically. Paper remains fully valid across the entire European Union. It remains valid because Brussels and the national ministries, conscious of the real digital divide in the sector, decided to give everyone an extra year of breathing room.
This does not mean 2026 is a wasted year. It means it is a year to prepare calmly, not a year to sit still.
From 1 January 2027: Electronic registration of phytosanitary treatments becomes mandatory across the entire European Union. Paper is gone for phytosanitaries. This is the first real deadline with consequences.
From 2028: The full digital farm logbook — covering not just phytosanitary treatments but also fertilisation, irrigation, cultivation events and CAP interventions — becomes mandatory. The exact date depends on each Member State’s implementing legislation. In Spain, Royal Decree 34/2025 set 1 January 2028 as the firm date for the full CUE. Italy is on the same trajectory, with a phased integration into SIAN through 2028 and beyond.
In short: 2026 is the year to prepare without pressure. 2027 is the year where there are no more excuses for phytosanitaries. 2028 onwards is when the full system runs at cruising speed.
Spain and Italy: same direction, different implementations
Understanding how the same EU regulation is implemented differently in two key countries helps explain why the sector is confused.
Spain built a centralised national system, the SIEX, with a web portal and a set of standardised XML export formats. Farmers use their own tools (commercial or public) and export to SIEX/XML. Each autonomous region (Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Aragón) has its own regional registry that feeds into SIEX. Andalusia alone accounts for roughly 80% of Spanish olive oil production. The Spanish timeline was set by Royal Decree 1054/2022, heavily modified by Royal Decree 34/2025 (which made the CUE voluntary during the 2023-2027 CAP period) and again by Royal Decree 1039/2025 of 19 November 2025 (which implemented the EU postponement).
Italy took a more centralised route. The SIAN portal hosts the Fascicolo Aziendale (the farm’s master record) and the Piano Colturale Grafico (the georeferenced cropping plan). The QDCA is integrated directly into this infrastructure — meaning that every operation you register is automatically associated with a specific parcel from the Piano Colturale Grafico. The Italian track record specification (tracciato record) is notably more demanding than the EU minimum: it asks for cultivation events, fertilisers, irrigation and machinery, going well beyond the strict requirements of Regulation 2023/564. This is one of the reasons Italy has been among the Member States most eager to use the EU extension — the Italian system is more ambitious, and the transition is correspondingly more complex.
Neither approach is inherently better. Spain’s model gives more flexibility to third-party tools and regional variation; Italy’s model gives more coherence at the cost of more centralised friction. The destination is the same.
Other Member States are on similar paths. Portugal has its own iSIP system. France works through multi-regional portals. Greece, Croatia, and Bulgaria are building or rolling out their national solutions. The pace varies, but the endpoint is shared.
The European context: what’s driving all this
It helps to know that the digital farm logbook is not an isolated regulatory whim. It’s part of a broader European strategy to digitise farm management, with several pieces worth keeping in mind.
Regulation (EU) 2021/2115 — the CAP Strategic Plans Regulation for 2023-2027. This is the foundation of enhanced conditionality and the linkage between direct payments and digital compliance.
Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/564 — originally established the electronic phytosanitary register obligation from 2026. The mother regulation on this specific point.
Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2203 — the one that amended the above and granted the extensions currently in force. It’s an unusual move from Brussels: admitting that a deadline wasn’t realistic and giving Member States room to adapt.
Since 2024, every Member State is also required to offer the FaST (Farm Sustainability Tool for Nutrients) — a free digital advisory tool for sustainable nutrient management. FaST doesn’t replace the digital logbook, but it’s part of the same ecosystem: a future in which data flows between the farmer, the administration and CAP compliance without the farmer having to enter the same information twice.
The direction of travel is clear: less paper, more cross-referencing between databases, more automatic verification of compliance. The farm logbook is one piece in a much larger puzzle.
What the logbook has to contain
The minimum content required by the EU regulation includes:
- Farm and parcel identification (cadastral reference, georeferenced plots)
- Phytosanitary treatments: product used, dose, date, parcel, pest or disease target, pre-harvest interval
- Fertilisation: type of fertiliser, quantity, date, parcel
- Irrigation: volume, date, system used
- Technical advice: justification for the treatment, where required
- Holder’s signature
What really matters is not just recording what you did, but being able to prove it in an exportable, standards-compliant format — XML for the national system, PDF for inspections.
But there’s a nuance most guides don’t mention: the digital logbook is not a static form. It’s designed so that data flows into national databases and from there gets cross-referenced with other public registries. This means the administration can automatically verify, for example, whether the phytosanitary product you registered is authorised for that crop, whether the dose falls within legal limits, or whether the pre-harvest interval was respected before harvest.
This is a change of model. From paper that is reviewed once a year during an on-site inspection, to a connected system that can verify anything, anytime. It has practical implications: mistakes no longer hide in a drawer. They get detected.
What happens if you don’t comply
It’s worth separating two things that often get confused: penalties for not keeping the logbook, and penalties for incorrect phytosanitary use. They’re not the same.
In 2026, with the 2025/2203 extension in force, there is no specific sanction regime for not keeping the electronic logbook. You can stay on paper all year if you want. 2026 is by design an adaptation year.
From 2027 onwards, when electronic phytosanitary records become mandatory, non-compliance can lead to:
- Complications in inspections: without compliant digital records, inspections become longer and more complicated. What should be a quick verification becomes a problem.
- CAP conditionality penalties: the CAP 2023-2027 has an enhanced conditionality regime that links direct payments to compliance with Statutory Management Requirements (SMR) and Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC). Missing or incomplete records can translate into reductions in direct payments and in eco-scheme payments.
- Penalties for improper phytosanitary use: this already exists today and is independent of the digital logbook. National phytosanitary laws (Spain’s Law 43/2002 on Plant Health, Italy’s D.Lgs. 150/2012 on sustainable use of pesticides) contemplate administrative fines ranging from a few hundred euros up to tens of thousands, depending on severity and repeat offences. The digital logbook is the tool that demonstrates you did things correctly. Without it, your position in front of an inspector is weaker.
The key point: the digital logbook is not just another piece of paperwork. It’s the tool that documents that you’re doing your job properly. Without it, you’re more exposed to penalties that already exist and that don’t depend on the logbook itself.
The real problem: it’s not filling in fields, it’s changing the habit
We talk to dozens of olive growers every week across Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. Most of them have no problem with technology. They have a problem with timing.
You’re out in the field, you’ve just finished a phytosanitary treatment, and the last thing you want is to sit down and fill out forms. You write it on a piece of paper. Or in a note on your phone. Or you don’t write it down at all and trust that you’ll remember.
Two weeks later, when you try to reconstruct what you did, data is missing. The exact date. The dose. Which parcels you treated. And you start estimating instead of recording.
This is the problem to solve. It’s not a regulatory problem. It’s a workflow problem.
The tool you use has to work in the moment you finish the operation. In the field. Often without coverage. In under a minute. If it doesn’t meet those conditions, you won’t use it, no matter how mandatory the regulation becomes.
And this is where many tools on the market fail. They are designed from a desk, by people who have never had to register a treatment with dirty hands under the midday sun. Forms with too many fields. Endless dropdowns. Workflows that take five steps when they should take two.
The result is predictable: the tool exists, but it doesn’t get used. And a digital logbook that isn’t filled in at the moment of action is exactly as useless as a paper logbook filled in from memory three weeks later.
What they don’t tell you: the logbook as a management tool
There is one way of seeing the digital logbook as a burden. It’s the common way. Another bureaucratic hoop coming from Brussels, another box to tick.
But there’s another way of seeing it, and it’s the one we find most interesting: the digital logbook, used well, is the first real management tool many olive farms will ever have.
Think about it. When every treatment of a campaign is recorded, you can answer questions that were previously impossible: how much did I spend on phytosanitaries per hectare this year? Compared to last year? Which parcels were most expensive to treat? Am I applying more product than necessary in any given block?
When fertilisations are recorded with dates and doses, you can correlate them with production. Which fertilisation strategy yielded the best result? Is there a difference between irrigated and rain-fed parcels?
When you have the historical record of several campaigns, you start to see patterns. And patterns are the foundation of informed decisions.
The digital logbook doesn’t have to be just the document you show to an inspector. It can be the document you consult yourself, to manage your farm better. The difference lies in the tool you choose and how you use it.
How to prepare without stress
If you haven’t started yet with a digital logbook, here are the practical steps. The fact that 2026 doesn’t legally require anything doesn’t mean you can leave it until December. It means precisely the opposite: you have a clean year to build the habit without pressure.
1. Make sure your cadastral and farm registry data is up to date. The georeferenced parcel identification is the starting point of everything. If your farm registry isn’t clean, start there — talk to your national or regional agricultural office.
2. Choose a tool that works offline. Coverage is patchy or non-existent in many olive-growing regions. If the app needs a permanent connection, it’s not suitable for the field.
3. Start registering phytosanitary treatments now. Don’t wait for 2027. The sooner you build the habit, the less it will cost you when it becomes mandatory. You’ll also have accumulated historical data to work with.
4. Verify that the tool exports in the format your national system accepts. Some tools let you register but don’t export in the official format — SIEX/XML in Spain, the SIAN tracciato record in Italy. Check this before investing time.
5. Make sure the tool tells you what’s missing. A good digital logbook doesn’t just record: it tells you where you stand on compliance. What needs to be signed, which treatments lack technical justification, which parcels haven’t had any activity registered for weeks.
What we’re doing at Olearia Agritech
When we designed Olearia Agritech’s field book module, we did it thinking about exactly this problem. Not about regulation in the abstract, but about the olive grower who finishes a treatment at three in the afternoon and needs to register it before they forget.
It works offline. Registering an operation takes less than a minute. The system automatically generates the documentation required by the regulation and shows a real-time compliance score so that you always know where you stand.
It exports in formats compatible with the Spanish SIEX and the Italian SIAN, as well as in XML and PDF. If something is missing — a pending signature, an approaching deadline — it warns you.
We’re not the only option on the market. But we’re the one designed specifically for olive growing, tested in real fields across Spain and Italy, with a free plan so you can get started with no commitment.
Questions we get all the time
“So in 2026 I can still use paper?” Yes. After Regulation (EU) 2025/2203, in 2026 paper is perfectly valid for phytosanitary records across the entire EU. But starting from zero on 1 January 2027, with no experience with the tool and no historical data, is the worst possible strategy. Start now, even if you run it in parallel with paper.
“Does the extension also apply to the full logbook in 2028?” No. The 2025/2203 extension applies only to the electronic phytosanitary register, which moves from 2026 to 2027. The timeline for the full digital logbook remains on its original track in both Spain (1 January 2028) and Italy (phased through 2028).
“Does my cooperative’s app count?” It depends. If it exports in the format your national system accepts (SIEX/XML in Spain, SIAN-compatible tracciato in Italy) and covers the minimum fields required by the regulation, yes. If it’s a shared Excel on Google Drive, no. Check with your technical advisor or your local agricultural office.
“What if I only have a few parcels? Does this still apply to me?” Yes. The obligation doesn’t depend on farm size. If you apply phytosanitary products, you’ll need an electronic record from 2027 onwards. It doesn’t matter whether you have 2 hectares or 200.
“Is the Spanish CUE the same as the Italian QDCA?” No, but they share the same European foundation. Both implement the same underlying EU regulations, both replace the traditional paper logbook, both feed into a national database with similar goals. The differences are in the national infrastructure (SIEX vs SIAN), the exact data fields required, and the regional administrative layer. A tool designed properly should support both export formats.
“Who can help me if I don’t know how to use this?” National and regional agricultural offices offer training. Cooperatives and farmer associations across the Mediterranean are organising information sessions. And well-designed digital tools shouldn’t require a training course: if you need a course to use it, it’s probably not the right tool.
The digital farm logbook is not a threat. It’s an opportunity to professionalise the management of your olive farm. The extension to 2027 gives you one year of breathing room — use it to arrive prepared, not to postpone the problem. Get started for free with Olearia Agritech.
Article updated in April 2026 to reflect the entry into force of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2203 and its national implementations.