The Project and the Objectives of PreConAgri
Main Objective
→ Methods of Conservation Agriculture including minimum or no-tillage, the application of crop rotation and permanent soil cover with vegetation and residues (mulching).
→ Methods of Smart Agriculture including variable rate fertilization and controlled traffic farming (CTF) coincidental with estimation of optimal pathways inside and outside the plots.
The adoption of these practices is expected to reduce the impact of conventional agriculture on soil degradation and nitrate pollution.
The problems we target
b) Compression from the destruction of soil structure due to intensive tillage and frequent disorderly machine passage. Soils in Greece are largely under a state of erosion and compression risk. These risks are expected to increase significantly in the near future due to climate change, which brings about increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events (e.g. heavy rainfall), which combined with unsustainable cultivation practices (frequent tillage, disorderly machine passage in the field, etc.), is expected to lead to further degradation of soil quality or even make large areas infertile, unsuitable for agricultural use, thereby reducing the country’s productive potential.
c) Irrational use of nitrogen fertilizers, which beyond increasing production costs, leads to pollution of surface and underground waters with nitrates. Furthermore today, the use of nitrogen fertilizers is also associated with another significant problem, which is greenhouse gas emissions. The production of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers is a particularly energy-intensive process accompanied by significant CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, while their overuse leads to an increase in N2O emissions, which is a gas nearly 300 times more dangerous than CO2 in terms of planetary warming.
d) Increased fuel consumption and the corresponding greenhouse gas emissions, which will be significantly reduced through PreConAgri. Besides, the EU requires a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and the implementation of sustainable agricultural practices can greatly contribute towards this goal.
Our approach
Conservation Agriculture:
→ Reduction of fossil fuels consumption for soil preparation and incorporation of atmospheric CO2 as organic carbon into the soil
→ Contribution to agriculture adaptation to climate change through improvement of fertility, prevention of erosion and enhancement of soil biodiversity by reducing disturbance and increasing organic matter, which serves as a substrate for microorganism growth, as well as preserving soil water
→ Crop rotations for improving agricultural land management through cultivations that utilize different root zone depths and the use of legumes that enhance fertility
Smart Agriculture:
→ Variable rate fertilization for the precise application of fertilizer quantities required, reducing the overall application amount without decreasing the availability of nutrient components for each specific crop
→ Controlled traffic farming coincidental with estimation of optimal pathways, a technique that constitutes a significant innovation at the international level and is particularly important for Greece characterized by fragmented agricultural land, because the transition between different plots requires a lot of time and increases fuel consumption