Agricultural innovation: digital technologies for Indian companies
The most advanced digital systems, which are already widespread in European countries, have great opportunities for development even in the Subcontinent where the need to increase the productivity of farms by reducing costs and optimising production factors emerges. The most advanced solutions, on the basis of which to develop Italian-Indian cooperation, were illustrated by the President of Agridigital Carlo Linetti during a conference at EIMA Agrimach.
01 March 2024, New Delhi: Just a few years ago, digital agriculture was a frontier sector, today it is a concrete and booming reality. This is the message that Carlo Linetti, president of Agridigital (FederUnacoma) and vice-president of COBO Group, wanted to convey in his speech at the conference on the theme “Innovation in the agro-mechanical sector as a key to a sustainable future”, held today in Bangalore as part of the EIMA Agrimach festival. Agriculture must meet growing food needs and therefore increase yields, but it must do so with respect for sustainability and biodiversity – Linetti explained – and it can do so only thanks to digital electronic systems, capable of monitoring every environmental and agronomic parameter, optimising production factors. Digital agriculture is able to combine satellite information with data collected by field control units, with sensors and computers applied to machines, while the management of big data and drone and robot fleets requires artificial intelligence systems that are evolving very rapidly.
This highly technological production method for European agriculture is no longer an optional choice but an obligatory route – said the president of Agridigital – and is destined to play an increasingly strategic role also in Indian agriculture. The country’s productive fabric is in fact composed of small companies that – Linetti specified – can have sufficient profitability only by optimising all production factors, then using advanced digital technologies in perspective. More generally – it has been explained – Indian agriculture must aim at sustainability, limiting the exploitation of water and organic matter, as well as the use of chemical inputs. Cost control is fundamental for agricultural enterprises, related, for example, to energy consumption, fertilisers, the protection of crops from plant diseases and compliance with environmental regulations: digital systems are also decisive in this regard, as also evidenced by the illustration of an advanced system, called VLN Vision Lane Navigation, which represents a technology that is already mature now being refined. Digital technology is a great ally of agriculture – concluded the President of Agridigital – and it must be promoted at every level, achieving the best synergies between public policies, sector industries and university and research structures.
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