Sustainable agriculture: the Caffini team tells you what it is!

Caffini takes a further step towards becoming a completely "zero impact" company. In line with its mission "Technology and Ecology" and on an increasingly green path, following the installation of photovoltaic panels on the office building, new modules have recently been mounted on the roofs of the production facilities to meet the entire company's electricity needs, including the heating and cooling of all production areas. The new system reduces CO2 emissions by over 1,100 tons per year.

Looking to the future with greater respect for the environment, especially in areas where nature is the real protagonist. That is what sustainable agriculture is.

It is a well-known fact that agriculture has a direct impact on the environment and plays a significant role in climate change, water scarcity and related contamination, land degradation and deforestation, it is at the same time partly the cause of climate change and partly the victim of its severe consequences.

In this article, we try to briefly explain what is meant by sustainable agriculture, where we stand and, above all, what needs to be done. Let's see it together!

Sustainable agriculture: what is it?

Sustainable agriculture is a system that encompasses long-term activities involving animal husbandry and plant cultivation. These activities concern the satisfaction of basic human needs, the improvement of environmental conditions and the optimal utilisation of non-renewable and limited natural resources. Furthermore, an important objective of sustainable agriculture is also to stimulate the profitability of agricultural activities and improve the quality of life for society as a whole.

We can therefore say that sustainable agriculture seeks to:

• Meeting human nutritional needs;
• Improving the quality of the environment and the natural resource base on which the agricultural economy depends;
• Optimise the use of non-renewable energy and resources in the fields by achieving integration between biological control methods and natural biological cycles;
• Preserving the profitability of the field economy;
• Improving the quality of life of farmers and society as a whole.

How is it moving in the world?

A UN summit in New York on 25-27 September 2015 established the so-called 2030 Agenda for Sustainability, aimed at ending poverty in all its forms. Here, it set the goal of 'a world based on universal respect for human rights and human dignity, the rule of law, justice, equality and non-discrimination'.

The Sustainable Development Goals are to be realised by 2030 at the global level by all UN member states.

According to the FAO, to be sustainable, agriculture must meet the needs of present and future generations while ensuring profitability, environmental health and social and economic equity.

Where do we stand in Italy?

According to the most recent Symblola-Coldiretti report on the green economy, Italian agriculture is now the greenest in Europe. The data, also reiterated for 2022, reveal that Italy:

• Is the only country in the world with 296 geographical indications recognised by the EU for its food products;
• It leads the world in terms of food safety, with the smallest number of agri-food products containing irregular chemical residues;
• It is the only country to have provided an integrated public body-certified system for sustainable pesticide management, with stricter standards than the mandatory Integrated Pest Management legislation;
• It has the second largest area of agricultural land used for organic farming in the EU with a total of 75,873 certified organic farms;
• It is the world's second largest exporter of organic products after the United States.

Sustainable agricolture told by the Caffini team

As we wrote in the article 'Agriculture 4.0: towards a digital future with Caffini solutions', 'The quality of the soil depends on the authenticity of the products we consume and the health of our ecosystem.

Our vision has always been that technology and ecology can coexist, and technological innovation has a fundamental role to play in an increasingly sustainable future.

The new frontier is intelligent agriculture, or agriculture 4.0, which involves the application of innovations in the sector relating to digitisation with geolocation of agronomic activities for the timely collection of data that allow future choices to be made aimed at optimising resources to maximise results.

Technology & Ecology is our Mission that has always inspired us to realise solutions that have been recognised and awarded several times by the most authoritative competitions in the sector.

If you have questions or if you are curious to discover in detail the Caffini boom sprayers, mist-blower sprayers and special sprayers, do not hesitate to contact us: our experts are available to satisfy your curiosity and needs.