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August 1, 2024 - xFarm Technologies, the tech company that aims to digitize the agribusiness sector, and Giovani di Confagricoltura - ANGA, are launching a project focused on regenerative agriculture, with the support of dss+, a consulting company with expertise in the field. The goal is to test and evaluate the effectiveness of the practices inherent in this farmland management system, and then to define guidelines with respect to their implementation in various production areas. Thirty-two farms have been selected throughout Italy for an experiment that will see them play a leading role for the next three years. Arable, rice and fruit (olive and viticulture) farming are the sectors involved.
At base of the selection of the 32 farms that will take part in the trial, the sending, at the beginning of 2024, of a questionnaire to all ANGA members , created together with dss+ and aimed at framing the member farms from both a structural and organizational and agronomic point of view. The selected farms will be equipped with the Hubfarm platform developed by Confagricoltura precisely in collaboration with xFarm Technologies and created to collect, manage and share agronomic information and data useful to agricultural enterprises.
A project, that of Hubfarm, which is part of a broad plan to support the digital transition in the agricultural sector, also aimed at increased sustainability, in line with national and European development plans.
The questionnaire was administered to more than 900 youth agricultural enterprises throughout Italy, and yielded information on their maturity with respect to regenerative agriculture practices and the prospect of initiating paths in this direction.
Regarding agronomic practices, the results that emerged tell of how 50% of respondents apply a rotation of less than two years (25% mono-sowing) and 28% use cover crops(cover-crops) systemically, while 65% say they use organic soil conditioners. Ninety-five percent believe it is necessary to undertake a change to more sustainable practices , and 67% say they have already started to do so.
The selected farms (11 in the Northeast, 8 in the Northwest, 7 in the Center, and 6 in the South and Islands) will begin a regenerative agriculture journey, the implementation of which will begin during the winter of 2024/2025.
In this first phase, which started in March 2024, technicians from xFarm Technologies and dss+, in agreement with ANGA associates, are planning and carrying out soil sampling and analysis activities designed to detect soil conditions prior to implementing the new regenerative agriculture practices (so-called "time zero"), so as to verify their effectiveness in improving soil health, particularly with regard to Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) content. In order to capture the variability of soils but at the same time contain the costs of sampling and analysis, sampling points will be identified through soil characterization maps developed through satellite analysis of the study area and accurate statistical models.
Then, during co-design workshop activities, farmers will be involved in identifying a set of regenerative farming practices to be adopted in their farm contexts. At the end of the course, which will last a minimum of 3 years, regenerative farming protocols suitable for the different production focuses analyzed during the project will be defined on base of the observations collected and new soil analyses.
During the course of the project, thanks to the Hubfarm platform, an innovative tool developed by Confagricoltura with xFarm Technologies for planning, monitoring and analyzing all agricultural activities in an integrated way, directly on a smartphone or tablet, it will be possible to keep track of the history of tillage, fertilization and defense and irrigation interventions within farms, fundamental elements for building a solid farm database. Through a predictive model that simulates soil carbon dynamics, it will be possible to visualize the trend of organic matter in the soil at base the agricultural practices adopted in the field. In this way, different scenarios of changes in emissions and sequestration can then be simulated, hopefully stimulating farmers in permanently implementing the new learned practices, with a view to greater environmental and economic sustainability.
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