The agri-food and livestock industry exhibition returns to CremonaFiere from 28 to 30 November 2024.
Feeding the world remains a problem of global dimensions: the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, recently published by five specialised UN agencies (including FAO), paints a genuinely dramatic picture with 733 million people suffering from hunger in 2023; meanwhile, the adult obesity rate has increased continuously over the last decade, from 12.1% in 2012 to 15.8% in 2022. The report also draws our attention to the fact that in 2022, more than 2.8 billion people were unable to afford a healthy diet.
In this context, agriculture and its productive capacity play a critical role, supported by technology, the only way of building sustainable food systems and improving food security in every corner of the world. Indeed, precision agriculture and smart farming technologies and techniques promise to make a substantial contribution to adequate, high quality and sustainable models of agricultural production.
And this is one reason technology will be a central issue at CremonaFiere, at the Zootecniche Cremona International Exhibition, from 28 to 30 November 2024.
Among such innovations, blockchain technology is now being used in agriculture to track information about plants, from the crop to the supermarket shelf. Blockchain technology can be used to resolve urgent problems like fraud, safety recalls and inefficiencies in procurement chains, and track products in the current food system.
But the applications of blockchain technologies goes beyond assuring food security, also adding value to the market by establishing online registries and blocking market prices. The traditional approach to establishing purchase and sale prices is based on the judgement of market actors, rather than information derived from the entire value chain. Providing access to such data promises to create a holistic overview of supply and demand, in other words a genuinely transparent marketplace.
Another area of great interest is that of IoT (the Internet of Things), which is being used as a smart farming solution to monitor cultivated fields remotely from any location. This involves using sensors to track soil humidity, the health of crops, the condition of livestock and temperature. As a result, IoT technologies enable us to create automated irrigation facilities capable of managing water resources intelligently, among other applications.
Already widely used, agricultural Geographic Information Systems (GIS) use drones and satellites to survey the locations and types of crops, their level of fertilisation, the condition of the soil and other associated data. Using the information generated by GIS remote sensing equipment and software, farmers can identify the best location for sowing crops in a field and take informed decisions about how to improve soil nutrition.
“At the Zootecniche Cremona International Exhibition,” says President of CremonaFiere, Roberto Biloni, “we have the mission of representing the industry and giving an overview of its future developments. In this context, research and technological innovation are key concerns. As an international showcase for the industry, the latest and most important innovations are discussed and presented at the Cremona exhibition. Like every previous year, the 2024 edition will be showcasing the most advanced developments in the industry.”
