The aim of sustainable agriculture is to meet society's needs for food and agricultural products without compromising the future coverage of these needs. This means maintaining healthy soil for future years, recycling and minimizing all kinds of waste, and using water resources more efficiently.
The sustainability challenges facing the agricultural sector are twofold:
● Cutting down emissions responsible for climate change; and
● Adapting to its future impacts.
These are the two major challenges for agriculture and for determining the next steps.
As agriculture accounts for 15% of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, the priority is to implement actions to make it more sustainable.
In particular, there are four areas for action that will deliver immediate results:
Training of farmers. The lack of education on the part of farmers on the consequences of not adopting new sustainable agricultural practices and the continued application of old traditional methods results in the degradation of natural resources, environmental pollution and the undermining of farmland.
Increase in funds. At the same time, even if farmers are aware of sustainable practices, without the provision of funds, both public and non-public, it becomes impossible to implement them.
Compliance with climate standards. Compliance of all facilities to ISO 14001, and other climate standards, in factories, with regular external audits and verifications, will help mitigate pollutants and minimise waste.
Precise irrigation. The problem of water scarcity due to drought and surface water runoff as well as poor access to water supplies require the application of precise irrigation. By changing the way water is used, higher and better quality yields can be achieved with fewer resources.
E-On Integration can help farmers address sustainability challenges by adopting modern sustainable agriculture practices. We will create a platform with data analysis and machine learning techniques on historical and sensor data to identify relationships between climatic/weather conditions, soil geochemical characteristics, crop management practices and crop production yields.
This platform will allow the monitoring of important indicators/parameters of farmland performance (e.g. weather conditions, environmental characteristics, growth conditions) and provide a system of model and data-based recommendations that will help mitigate pollutants and minimize waste, help minimize losses due to adverse environmental and climatic conditions and help achieve more efficient production methods.