New Holland has chosen Italy as the location for its first official smart farm. The ‘New Holland Smart Farm’ will be located in Bologna at ‘Il Raccolto’ or ‘The Collection’ – an agricultural co-operative that cultivates around 1,400 hectares (3,500 acres) of land to grow cereals, wheat, livestock feed crops and grapes. Through the partnership the farm will go on to demonstrate successful sustainable farming with a connected fleet environment, energy-independence and a circular economy model.
Connected fleet environment
Il Raccolto farm already 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. As the New Holland Smart Farm it will support the brand’s research by providing agronomic data collected through the telematics systems on these machines.
Parag Garg, Chief Digital Officer CNH Industrial explains: “At Il Raccolto farm, New Holland will demonstrate first-hand its vision for Agriculture 4.0, as many of the machines in the farm’s fleet are connected through MyPLM Connect telematics. We know that a connected fleet provides more efficiency and uptime – ultimately providing a higher ROI for our customers. This partnership is yet another example of how New Holland is leading the future of farming by delivering the best digital and technology solutions to our customers.”
Energy-independence
Il Raccolto already 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 aligns perfectly with New Holland’s desire 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.
Circular economy model
The biogas is used to power the farm and refined into fuel-grade biomethane to power a New Holland Methane Power Tractor (such as the award-winning T6 model). The by-products of this complete process are used as natural fertilisers and help to improve soil quality. This closed-loop circular economy approach can achieve a carbon-neutral, or even carbon-negative agriculture.
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.”
Il Raccolto farm will have a multi-faceted role as the New Holland Smart Farm. It will be the brand’s official demonstration farm in Italy and the base for its European Training Team and it will host events for its dealers and customers to enjoy the full experience of sustainable farming with New Holland in the field.
The farm will also be a centre for knowledge exchange with New Holland employees, aimed at improving the customer experience through an in-depth understanding of agriculture 4.0 technologies, the circular economy model and biomethane on the farm.
“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.” adds Lambro “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.”
