SOSFARM – Sustainable and precision agriculture
The SOSFARM Value Chain integrates elements of economic and environmental sustainability with protocols aimed at exploiting the spatial-temporal variability of production processes in the agri-food sector.
Strategic Objective 1 – Resilient and Climate-Intelligent Agriculture
The strategic objective is aimed at adapting and strengthening the resilience of agricultural systems to climate change, to increase productivity and profitability in a sustainable way. Integrated, organic, conservation and precision agriculture represent the field of action which, through approaches based on the most modern ‘omics’ knowledge, applies multiform and integrated technologies to identify critical stress thresholds and criteria for “personalized” administration, cultivation plant and soil management and animal husbandry. The change related to the application of innovative technologies potentially affects all production sectors of the livestock and vegetable sector, including the nursery-seed sector, ICT companies, soil management, plant protection and weed management, fertilization and materials. Systemic relationships between companies and connection with other strategic objectives will lead to traceable, certified and quality productions, protecting health and the environment, and aiming to develop dedicated production chains in the regional agri-food system.
Strategic Objective 2 – The “precision” management of plant and animal production
The strategic objective concerns the reduction of the still growing gap that separates the variegated technological possibilities offered by precision agriculture (acquisition of images from various platforms at various resolution) and the effective translation of the same into new management techniques in agriculture and animal husbandry. In more detail, it is necessary to specify the operational protocols that can transform the existing “variability” in a population of plants or animals into a resource to be exploited or corrected to increase the economic and environmental sustainability of the applied techniques. Variable rate technologies stand out as powerful means of rationalizing the use of water, fertilizers, pesticides and feed. The realization of this objective cannot fail to proceed hand in hand with the training of new professional figures who can bring together the transversal expertise that these techniques require and which involve engineering, IT, agronomic and economic skills.
Strategic Objective 3 – IoT and Big data to generate elements of knowledge indispensable for the management of increasingly sustainable production processes
The strategic objective intends to systematize the collection of an exponential amount of data and information that come from increasingly effective and timely monitoring systems and tools (IoT), whose management (Big data), implemented through specific analytical methods, can constitute a fundamental interpretative key to support not only different types of analysis, but also to give companies “predictive” powers about rapidly evolving phenomena. To achieve this technological and organizational objective, it is necessary to introduce and give substance to the concept of building the “Data Chain”, through which to organize a regional HUB aimed at guaranteeing the use of all digital and innovation services present and available. This is to facilitate an information ecosystem that allows you to collect and organize for the purpose of effective use, all the data that affect the production process of the various regional agri-food systems, both in their entirety and in their sector and / or supply chain declinations.
You can download the document relating to the SOSFARM Value Chain at this link.
