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In today's article we take you to Basilicata, more precisely to Venosa (PZ), to discover the farm Colline Soavi run by the Masturzo family, which tells us how it has applied the software and hardware services of xFarm to better manage its farm, where olive trees are grown using a special technique.
Our farm was founded in 2018 and deals with innovative olive groves, a new form of olive grove management that consists of having a espalier form of cultivation, typical of vineyards, so as to create a vegetative wall with a very high density of plants: from the normal 150-200 we reach 1680-1800 plants per hectare.
The high density of plants per hectare means that the problems typical of normal plants are amplified, which makes their control more complex. We must pay special attention to irrigation and fertigation, which must be continuous and precise. Another fundamental aspect is the control of phytopathologies and various insect pests that propagate extremely quickly and damagingly in these plants. Among the main enemies of the olive grove we have Margaronia, Oziorrinchus and, of course, the olive fly.
Before discovering xFarm we were already collaborating with other companies providing software for the irrigation part; however, these software had the major limitation of not being integrated into a single system but only provided us with data on irrigation itself, without indicating the best time to irrigate or even how much water to contribute.
I discovered xFarm at the February 2020 agricultural fair in Verona, Italy, and noticing the great potential and usefulness it could bring to the farm, I decided to invest early on in both the hardware and software.
When it comes to sensors, we have drawn on the entire range of xFarm, implementing several weather stations, soil moisture sensors, leaf wetness sensors and olive fly monitoring traps on our farm.
In managing data from moisture sensors we rely on the Irrigation module, which allows us to process the data by creating forecast models that tell us when and how much to irrigate. In plant disease control, on the other hand, we rely on the Defense module, so that we can monitor disease outbreaks and be able to intervene at the right time.
The olive fly is one of the main problems in olive groves. To control it, we have installed xTrap automatic insect monitoring traps which allow us to capture and monitor even remotely the presence of the insect and act accordingly.
In addition to the usefulness of the services offered by xFarm, we have been very positively impressed by the support. When we encounter a problem we write in the support chat and always find someone ready to help us.
I recommend xFarm both to young farmers who are just entering this world and want to work in an innovative way, and to already experienced farmers who could take advantage of the modules and sensor technology to work more effectively.
We would definitely like to bring telemetry into all our vehicles and equipment since we believe in this technology so much. In addition, we hope to implement other sensor technology such as weather stations and soil moisture sensors in our farm to have even more effective monitoring of what is happening on the farm.
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