Originally published here.

Matteo Vanotti is CEO of xFarm Technologies, a tech company focused on digitalizing the agri-food sector, providing innovative tools to support farmers and stakeholders to manage their businesses.

Absolutely. In Europe, one in twenty farmers disappears every year due to a lack of economic sustainability. And climate change is a huge driver of economic instability. 95% of farmers work outdoors, fully impacted by climate change. The frequency of bad climate events has certainly increased in recent years. Rain has been much more concentrated in a few major events, rather than distributed throughout the year, which has bad impacts for the soil, yield and farm maintenance. These trends only seem to be increasing at the moment, so the only real solution is to adapt.

Farming efficiency is directly correlated to climate and sustainability. That’s the answer to making farming more sustainable ecologically – to be more economically sustainable too. If you’re efficient with resources, you are also sustainable from an economic perspective.

Technology is not a definitive solution, but it can be an ally. To try to anticipate issues and mitigate risk. Most of the time, it’s all about making the right decision based on last-minute changes, like the weather, market trends and input costs. Clearly, adapting agronomic practices with things like regenerative farming – a trend at the moment focusing on restoring the natural fertility of the soil – is another way to mitigate harm. Good practices like regenerating the soil will also have a positive climate impact, as more fertile soils will require less fertilizers and better manage climate events. To manage all this complexity, digital technologies are the only solution to keep track of what is happening and start making data-driven decisions.

Farming is one of the last industries to be digitized. Only one in ten farmers uses technology to be more efficient. We can create a baseline and work with farmers to improve practices, methods, and get much more information. We can optimize the use of inputs like water and feed, too

Irrigation, for example, is fundamental to farming and quite a complex topic. How much water should you give to each individual plant in different fields and with different soil? That’s very hard to estimate and forecast. Today, with sensors and satellites, we can have real-time data and really know exactly how much water is needed and when. That means farmers can actually plan ahead and forecast resources as well. On average, farmers save 20-40% on water usage this way, and are much more strategic about where they put water.

And of course, using less water today helps to prepare better for drought, which is one of the main issues impacting Europe over the past two or three years.

We also help farmers with fertilizer use. Fertilizers have one of the highest carbon impacts for farms. So we use satellites to monitor the health of each field, and then can create “prescription maps” to treat specific areas. These maps are sent via cloud to the tractors, which can then adjust the amount of fertilizer spread per square metre, based on which parts of the field need it most. We can optimize by 5-20% the amount of fertilizer used, which then has a huge impact on carbon emissions.

Marketing and advertising has a real contribution here. Customers are really buying along sustainable lines, and this will continue.

We saw something similar with organic production a decade or so ago. Sustainability is now a major topic in food production. So we’ve moved from organic production to sustainable farming and supply chains. Putting a label is not enough. Changes need to be made in the field, and data is the right way to create transparency with the end customer, giving them the right tools to make sustainable choices when they’re buying their groceries.