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Bringing digital innovation to agriculture to improve farmers' lives. Agriculture historically has been the engine of innovation, but the advent of digital represents a new shift.
At xFarm, we are certainly very strong on digital, but to bring innovation it is not enough to have a winning product: it takes training and dissemination of new technologies for change to happen. The work we do as a marketing team is geared toward bringing about this change, through campaigns that promote new digital technologies.
We do this by trying to make popular the use of new digital tools, for example through participation in TV series or throughinfluencer marketing, but also through training activities.
In fact, one of the special features of our team is the project Education, dedicated to schools and theupskilling of tomorrow's professionals. With Education we target future players in the world of agriculture, collaborating with more than 100 Technical Institutes and Universities. With the project Academy, on the other hand, we offer online evening courses designed for agronomists and practitioners. In this way, we can train students and professionals on Agriculture 4.0 and bring our experience, while also offering the opportunity to use our product.
Our mission is to spread technology: without a direct communication channel with agricultural stakeholders, we could not provide our services and bring digital transformation to the field.
I started working in xFarm in 2019. At that time I was directly involved at the operational level in marketing activities. Then a lot of other people came in, and over time I came to delegate much of the work to my co-workers. As of today I am involved in team member management and strategy regarding projects that are not yet in the execution phase. There are ten people on the Marketing Team, dividing their time between communications, digital marketing, and project Education. We have also just activated a new team dedicated to Customer Success, that is, taking care of those who are already customers, ensuring that they can use our products in the best way.
I have always had a strong passion for agriculture, although I am not a "child of the art." From an early age, I read magazines and attended industry fairs. When I enrolled in agricultural technical college, I opened Agromoderni, my YouTube channel. I wanted to popularize and talk about agriculture to enthusiasts like me. During high school I started spending a lot of time on it-there were periods when I would post one or two videos a day. I reached 25,000 subscribers on YouTube, and 10,000 followers on Instagram, which was quite a lot for the time. I think I was the first influencer in the agricultural world in Italy; I had created my own merchandising and was organizing meetups with followers. At the same time, I started to collaborate with some companies and work as a freelancer in communications, taking advantage of the know-how I had developed by producing thousands of pieces of content for farmers.
In college I once again followed my passion and enrolled in Agricultural Science and Technology. I happened to attend events as a speaker or moderator until, in 2019, at an event on digital agriculture, I met Matteo Vanotti, who had recently launched xFarm. We immediately felt we were on the same wavelength and started working together on the project, which at the time was still in its infancy.
Matthew invited me to the company and we decided together on the strategy, social channels, various projects, including. xFarm Academy.
The thing I love most is being involved in the strategy of xFarm, even outside the marketing department, and in everything related to the venture capital part. It allows me to feel almost like an entrepreneur.
One thing I want to improve on instead is people management, especially in keeping the team motivated. Stopping two extra hours at work no longer makes a difference as it might have in the beginning, what matters now is the spirit of the team.
In the beginning, in full startup style, I was the only person in charge of marketing. So I was in charge of running the first trade show we did, in 2020. I was by myself doing graphics, ordering materials, studying a booth, setting it up, and actually being at the fair. It was a very challenging time, but now things have changed: there are more than 100 of us and we do 6 fairs a month.
The company has many future outlets both in terms of technology and internationalization. I hope the marketing team will grow further so that we can engage on more and more projects and soon become a leader in digital agriculture in Europe.
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