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Thanks to the Barilla Farming platform devised by xFarm Technologies, together with Life Cycling Engineering, the CNR- Agrosat and Perfect Food, the 2,600 companies in Europe that supply soft wheat to Barilla per Carta del Molino supply chain will be accompanied by 2023 in a supply chain optimization process to improve farmers' work and promote production sustainability
Promoting sustainable supply chains to constantly improve product offerings and promote quality food. This is the challenge Barilla wants to overcome with the Mulino Bianco brand, a leading brand for the Italian market in the production of baked goods, together with xFarm Technologies; the tech company, in collaboration with Life Cycling Engineering, the CNR-Agrosat and Perfect Food, has developed for the Italian food multinational Barilla Farming, a new digital platform to easily help farmers and all operators in the supply chain at every stage of production, from farm management, to monitoring farmer data, with specific wheat disease outbreak risk alerts to order management along the supply chain.
A project that lays its foundation in a vision that unites the two entities, namely to promote and foster sustainable production. Barilla Farming thus becomes the digital tool that simplifies the communication of data from the Mill Charter supply chain , the Barilla group's specification for the sustainable cultivation of soft wheat born from collaboration with dozens of mills, hundreds of storage centers and thousands of farms.
The pilot project with Barilla, which began in 2020 with an initial involvement of 10 farms (becoming 150 in 2021), will go full-scale over the next growing season to become fully operational by April 2023 when as many as 2,600 farms, both Italian and European, that supply soft wheat to Barilla will be involved. From the 2022- 2023 season, moreover, the use of Barilla Farming will become a rule of the Mill Charter.
The platform, which is available on both mobile and desktop, enables comprehensive supply chain management because it helps both farmers monitor and improve what is happening in the field, and supply chain managers and Mill technicians to keep track of aggregate farm data and compare key farm parameters and indicators.
The platform also enables full control over sustainability by monitoring four environmental parameters (carbon footprint, water footprint, eutrophication and acidification) calculated on base of the agronomic activities carried out by farmers and viewable directly fromapp Barilla Farming.
In addition, thanks to IoT sensors installed in fields and the use of satellites to remotely monitor plots, suggestions are made to farmers to reduce the use of water, fertilizer and plant protection products. This enables improved decision-making processes at both the supply chain and individual farm level, with a view to sustainability of the entire production.
For the full implementation of the project, direct involvement of all the actors in the supply chain is envisaged, first and foremost the farmers, who will follow an ad hoc training course held by xFarm to introduce Barilla Farming and all the various functions, and make sure that this tool is understood and used to the fullest.
"Technology has allowed us to innovate and speed up the response to some of Barilla's needs on base of what are the needs of farmers and supply chain operators. Our solutions, in fact, start from the premise of wanting to concretely help, thanks to digital, those who work in the field on a daily basis, consequently promoting efficient and environmentally friendly agriculture. The goal is to get this project on a large scale and extend it to other supply chains that want to promote sustainability, digitization and traceability"- explains Matteo Vanotti, CEO of xFarm
"The sustainability path undertaken by Carta del Mulino in 2018 saw an initial part of the project dedicated to Biodiversity; now, after achieving relevant results in this regard, we have chosen to focus on reducing the environmental impact of the supply chain cultivation of soft wheat destined for Mulino Bianco. In doing so, we consider the use of technology fundamental, putting it at the disposal of all the actors in the supply chain, creating an innovative system with partners of absolute value, which can give concrete help to the farmer but also collect all the environmental and supply chain impact data to guarantee the best possible product for our consumers."- explains Michele Zerbini, Barilla's Purchasing Manager Soft Wheat&Flours..
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