Agriculture

How Digital Farming Contributes to Sustainability

Digitalization has the power to transform agriculture. It can help farmers achieve higher and better yields to feed the world’s growing population in a resource-efficient, sustainable manner making the best use of available arable land.

The immense potential of digitalization in agriculture lies in its ability to reach many farmers, including those in less developed countries. By increasing knowledge of on-farm sustainability, helping adapt farming practices to different countries’ specific agronomic conditions and enabling a more precise application of crop protection products, digital farming supplies crucial support to preserve scarce natural resources, foster sustainability and help reduce environmental impacts on global food production.

What target did we set for ourselves?

What impacts do we aim for?

Yield increase

Strong, sustainable farm operations

Less impact on the environment

What is our approach?

We work with farmers to effectively link digital innovation, digitally enabled products, and practical on-field solutions to create value for our customers and for the future of agriculture. Different geographical, climatic, and agricultural situations require innovative, tailored solutions. We are therefore developing profound know-how of the desirability and feasibility of integrating digital farming tools with strategic cropping systems, ensuring that our product development and approach to digital farming centers on addressing farmers’ needs and delivering increased value to them. This will enable us to scale as efficiently as possible and help us in realizing our ambitious sustainability targets.

This is where we stand now

We are continually championing and implementing the Digital Farming sustainability, by active involvement in related projects including in the "KlimaPartner Landwirtschaft" initiative in Germany.
Technologies such as smart sprayers and drones will further complement and enhance the benefits of our Decision Support Systems (DSSs) including xarvio^® FIELD MANAGER.
ONE SMART SPRAY, our smart spraying solution for precision weed management, is commercially available in Europe via OEM integration, with Brazil and North America to set to follow.
xarvio^® HEALTHY FIELDS, our unique outcomes-based solution, provides a tailored, field specific crop protection strategy that optimizes yield and crop protection and guarantees leaf health.
With our vision “Make every farm a smart farm” we’re aiming to reach 125 million hectares worldwide served by the ONE SMART SPRAY weed management system by 2030.

Die Funktionen des xarvio™ FIELD MANAGERs werden im Jahr 2020 weiter ausgebaut. Die neuen Funktionen zur Optimierung der Kulturen unterstützen mehr als 17.000 Landwirte auf über zwei Millionen Hektar weltweit und zielen darauf ab, basierend auf den Erfolgen des letzten Jahres höhere Erträge aus den Investitionen auf dem Feld zu erzielen.

Precision farming for more sustainable agriculture

The centerpiece of our digital farming offering is xarvio^® FIELD MANAGER. Through and in combination with it, we will develop integrated digital solutions to transition towards true precision farming and, with that, more sustainable agricultural systems. This includes pursing complementary collaborations with producers of farm machinery and farm management information systems. xarvio^® FIELD MANAGER can gather and process data from multiple sources – ranging from historical farm information to satellite images, weather data and IoT (Internet of Things) devices – and use crop models, disease models and agronomic algorithms to produce predictive insights. These insights generate field specific agronomic recommendations critical to farming, supporting the implementation of interventions such as dynamic seeding, variable fertilizer application and precision application (through optimal timing), and the ability for farmers to create and integrate buffer zones including biodiversity areas. Here crops receive the right amount of input at the right place and time. This leads to higher yields, helps reduce CO2e emissions, as well as leading to less natural resource use and environmental impact. Simultaneously, farmers save time and money through greater efficiency and convenience, while recording activities and collecting valuable data for future strategic decision making in their fields.

Drones and Smart Sprayers bring a high degree of accuracy to the fields

The ongoing development of new technologies, including smart sprayers and drones equipped with artificial intelligence (AI), will further complement and enhance the benefits of advanced decision support systems (DSS) like xarvio^® FIELD MANAGER. These new technologies represent its physical extension given they can monitor and intervene in the field with high precision.