Agriculture requires innovations to increase production yields in terms of quantity and quality, but also to increase efficiency in resource management. It is necessary to reduce environmental impact and production costs, in a context of climate change and market globalization. Precision farming has been gaining a crucial role in helping farmers run their businesses in a way that is productive and sustainable. Although the Central European area is the core of EU manufacturing, precision farming has not been high in the agenda and focus of smart specialization in our regions.

The project Transfarm 4.0 (2019–2022) aimed at increasing the direct participation of farmers in the precision farming sector and boosting the competitiveness of the European precision farming advanced manufacturing supply chains.
Transfarm 4.0 scouted new demand-driven precision farming solutions to meet the needs of the farmers. Within the project, companies, clusters, research institutions and farmers worked together to bring new technological solutions to the market. 

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Find sellers, manufacturers and service providers of precision farming technologies from all over Central Europe.


precisionfarm.it

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Precisionfarm.it is a space that will collect insights and ideas from the primary sector to explore the new boundaries of precision agriculture.


transfarm 4.0 final event

Transfarm 4.0 came to an end in 2022 and what better way to say goodbye than inviting researchers, farmers, companies to the project final event in Susegana, one of the towns dotted across the breathtaking, vineyard-covered landscape of the rolling Conegliano and Valdobbiadene Prosecco Hills. The event took place on 16 June 2022 at the CREA Experimental and Conference Centre in Susegana, a municipality in the Province of Treviso. If you missed you can still watch the recording on the YouTube Channel of FederUnacoma.

Final Event | Agenda.pdf

PILOT ACTIONS

PILOT ACTION 1 - ISOBUS APPLICATION - SEEDBED CONTROL was carried out to evaluate how precision farming systems influence the farming methods. During the action some communication challenges between the manufacturers and the customers were identified. 2 mini-projects, which focused on a transnational approach to conceiving new smart solutions, were carried out. The goal was to evaluate if the seedbed control was able to influence the roughness. The first parameter was the roughness, measured per variant. At this evaluation, it was possible to confirm that the seedbed-control variant could till the soil smoother than the average of the others. However, the results also showed that the controlled seedbed preparation could not develop significantly better plant emergence. The analysis of the variance showed that the Seedbed Control could not produce a significantly higher yield.

PILOT ACTION 2 - REMOTE AND PROXIMAL SENSING was is to implement an affordable precision spraying system (PSS) on a commercial orchard mist blower able to detect the canopy and spray according to its presence. The aim of the PSS precision spraying system, developed within Transfarm 4.0, was to be used for most agricultural perennial crops present in Central Europe. Moreover, it intends to be a solution not only for big farms but aims to satisfy the needs of small and medium farms with limited competencies and budgets for new investments. In this way, the PPS was tested on a specific mist blower, but with some minor adjustments, it can be installed on most mist blowers already present on the farms regardless of the make. The PSS used two LiDAR sensors and pulses with modulation (PWM) supported valves. The LiDAR sensors detected the mist blower position and estimated the presence of the tree’s canopy. The system could avoid treatment wasted because it sprayed only in the presence of a canopy and closed the nozzles when there was a gap in the vegetation hedge. The system was built as a plug-and-play tool that was easy to use for farmers with low technology skills. 

PILOT ACTION 3 - SENSOR DATA ACQUISITION FOR PRECISION VITIVULTURE IN A FIWARE DATA LAKE aimed to implement a smart data acquisition system in agriculture, allowing farmers to monitor and analyse relevant parameters and act accordingly. Thus, this pilot action belonged to the innovation domain of “big and smart data management”.
FIWARE, an open-source platform supported by the European Commission as part of the Digital Agenda 2020 (https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/fiware-european-success-story), was created to enable smart data acquisition. Creating a FIWARE data acquisition system, would allow monitoring of several parameters relevant to farmers. The sensor data were acquired at several wireless sensor nodes and sent to the FIWARE Context Broker, where they were stored and analysed. Since FIWARE is an open-source platform, no license costs occurred. By applying the FIWARE data acquisition system, different irrigation systems in this pilot action were monitored and evaluated, considering canopy microclimate and plant physiological status. Based on the big data provided by the network, an efficient irrigation plan specific to the terroir, cultivar and cultivation practices was established.

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Project Partners

Transfarm 4.0's family is made up of 10 partners from 5 central European countries.

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Start Date

1. 4. 2019

End Date

30. 6. 2022