November 30, 2021. New Holland Agriculture announced its partnership with “Il Raccolto” farm in Bologna, Italy, to demonstrate sustainable farming practices through a circular economy model and a connected fleet environment. Il Raccolto shares the brand’s vision of environmentally and economically sustainable agriculture based on innovation, agriculture 4.0 technologies, and energy independence. With this agreement, Il Raccolto becomes the first “New Holland Smart Farm”, partnering the brand to show its developments driven by its Clean Energy Leader strategy and demonstrate the resulting advanced solutions. It will also support New Holland’s research by providing agronomic data collected through the telematics systems on the machines at work in the farm.
Carlo Lambro, New Holland Brand President, stated: “Il Raccolto farm is the perfect partner for this initiative: they are a loyal New Holland customer with a large fleet of our equipment and, like us, they view sustainability as a business approach. Our partnership will enable us to offer our customers and stakeholders the full experience of successful sustainable farming with energy- independence and a circular economy model. The visitors will be able to see first-hand how this can be achieved with New Holland’s equipment, where our advanced PLM and telematics solutions create an ecosystem of interconnected machines. The “New Holland Smart Farm” will be a knowledge centre where we will demonstrate our equipment, deliver training, and share our technological and agronomic know-how, with the aim of spreading sustainable farming practices.”
Il Raccolto farm perfectly demonstrates how, with the right approach supported by the right equipment and technologies, sustainability can go hand in hand with profitability. With 2,000 ha, it is an arable and dairy farm, and vineyard. It grows cereals, wheat, livestock feed crops and seeds, as well as grapes. It produces milk for Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and Pignoletto wine – all to the high quality standards of DOP, DOC and IGP certification.
It is forward-looking operation that invests heavily in innovative technologies. It runs a fleet of more than 80 New Holland machines made up of the brand’s most advanced tractors, combine harvesters, forage harvesters, telehandlers, balers, light construction equipment and grape harvesters.
Il Raccolto also shares New Holland’s vision of the role of alternative energy sources in farming. It operates its own anaerobic biodigester and currently produces biogas from the farm’s agricultural waste. It plans to start production of biomethane and is working towards becoming entirely energy independent.
This will enable New Holland to demonstrate its Energy Independent Farm model, where animal and food waste, crop residues or specific energy crops are used to generate biogas in a biodigester. The biogas is used to power the farm and refined into fuel-grade biomethane to power a New Holland Methane Power Tractor. The by-products of this complete process are used as natural fertilizers and help to improve soil quality. This closed-loop circular economy approach can achieve a carbon-neutral, or even carbon-negative agriculture.
