Innovation, sustainability and circularity: the cornerstones of agri-business 4.0. A new training path for farms.

Innovation, sustainability and circularity: the cornerstones of the agro-zootechnical company 4.0, this is the title of the training course for agricultural companies that will be presented as part of the International Livestock Fairs in Cremona on Friday 1 December, at 4.30 p.m. in the Cristofori Hall during the event Innovation drives sustainability.

How to make the concepts of sustainability and circularity feasible and effective in agriculture and animal husbandry? How to support an agro-livestock company in the ecological transition? Or, more concretely, how to orient entrepreneurs towards forms of technical and technological innovation to achieve low environmental impact while maintaining high production and economic efficiency?

These are some of the questions that the training course starting in January 2024 will attempt to answer. Several days made up of individual lectures by high-level scientific lecturers from the two universities, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and the Politecnico di Milano, which will combine frontal presentations with interactive discussions with participants.

This project is the first result of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between ZAF Innovation Center (Centre for Agro – Zootechnical Food Innovation) and the CIB (Italian Biogas Consortium).
As part of the course, training sessions will be organised to accompany agro-livestock entrepreneurs on a path that restores a simple reality: achieving sustainability means dealing with many different factors at stake. This will start with a series of lectures on how to concretely implement environmentally sustainable practices on the farm: low environmental impact processing techniques, crop monitoring, optimisation of cultivation techniques and so on from an agronomic point of view. How to maximise the farm’s self-supply of energy and protein and how, at the same time, to keep the cost of the feed ration under control from a zootechnical point of view.

In addition, applied knowledge and the most innovative techniques for the production of renewable energy, in the various articulations ranging from biogas to agri-voltaics, and for the energy efficiency of the farm will be investigated. Lastly, scientific and technological efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions of zootechnical origin, both through good practices to be carried out in the barn and through strategies to valorise zootechnical effluents in the field. Thus combining circularity with sustainability.

The Centre, whose members include not only institutions, but also companies, trade associations and professional associations, and which avails itself of the collaboration of REI Reindustria Innovazione and the support of the LGH Foundation, aims to contribute to the creation, in the heart of the Po Valley, of a symbiotic system dynamic and inclusive system between agro-zootechnology, agro-industry and university, which allows the establishment of innovation and technology transfer processes, a national and international reference point for the training of skills and to accompany the evolution of the system towards the new challenges of ecological, energy and economic transition. The work of the ZAF Innovation Centre is being further consolidated. In fact, a new agreement is being finalised with CREA – the Council for Agricultural Research and Analysis of Agricultural Economics, which will be anticipated by the Mayor Gianluca Galimberti during his speech, and collaboration continues with MAECI, FAO and CIHEAM to consolidate international relations.

The CIB, active throughout Italy, is the first voluntary aggregation that brings together farms producing biogas and biomethane from renewable sources, representing the entire supply chain. With the Farming for Future project, also presented during the International Livestock Fair in Cremona, the Italian Biogas Consortium has outlined in a roadmap of ten actions the activities to be undertaken to contribute to the decarbonisation of agriculture, in line with European objectives, preserving the Italian agricultural and livestock heritage and protecting soil fertility.