The climate changes and poor environmental conditions resulting from human activity are becoming an ever stronger threat. We see many steps taken towards a cleaner and greener world economy and one of those is the European Green Deal.
The Deal is a roadmap of actions to be taken to ensure sustainable economy. Among those are restoring the biodiversity and cutting the pollution, including by reducing the amount of fertilizers used in agriculture with 20% by year 2030.
The reason is that the use of fertilizers in agriculture is known to contribute to many harmful environmental effects like contamination of the soil, water and air which, indirectly, cause the death of animal species like insects, birds, mammals as well as plants, which affects the biological diversity.
While there is no doubt that these measures are a must and a step in the right direction, many farmers are looking at them as a threat to productivity. The reduction in the usage of fertilizers is considered as a factor for reducing crop yield, poor quality of the crops and as a result – losses to farmers.
But, these measures can as well pose a great opportunity for farmers. Considering that the EU governments plan on subsidies to the farmers, as well as a number of training and consultation events related to reducing the fertilizers used, the farmers can use those to find out how to migrate to automated precision farming solutions like ONDO.
Automated precision farming solutions (also known as smart farming solutions) would fertilize the plants just when the usage of fertilizers would be most efficient and beneficial for the plants. The efficiency may depend on the soil moisture, weather forecast (e.g no rain forecast in the next days), air moisture, etc. Automated precision farming solutions are automatically collecting data from soil moisture sensors, air moisture sensors, weather stations and so on, analyzing the data and using specific mechanisms to define the best time for plant fertilization. They also distribute just the right amount of fertilizer, right at the plant root, thus reducing the fertilizer used while increasing the fertilization efficiency.
Using precision farming solutions to reduce the amount of fertilizer used would not only allow farmers to fit the Green Deal requirements, but would even let them register savings on fertilizers used and be even more competitive on the EU market.
Every threat is an opportunity. We all realize that we need to make changes towards sustainable agriculture, and the Green deal, along with its strictly fixed deadlines, is a reason to look seriously into switching to precision farming.
We at ONDO will be planning a number of events and trainings on how ONDO Precision farming solutions can help you fit the EU Green deal fertilizer usage requirements.
Book a slot in our first planned training event by sending an email to: [email protected]
