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Abaco Group UK

We are an innovative agro-technology Group, a leading provider of precision agriculture services and technology innovation

Abaco UK is part of Diagram Group, a technology hub serving agri-businesses, owned by Nextalia, Europe’s most important investment fund in the agritehc sector. Our goal is to promote socio-economic and environmental sustainability in the agrifood supply chain. We work with partners across the agri-food industry, agricultural companies, Governments and Public Administration.

Operating world-wide

With offices in UK and all around Europe, we operate world-wide across public and private sectors.

The Group in numbers

hectares managed
+ 0
hectares in Africa in partnership with ENI
+ 0
agricultural subsidies managed
+ 0 billion
employees
+ 0
headquarters located in UK and Europe
0
invested in R&D
+ 0 million

Our Methodology

Services and solutions

What we do

We develop software solutions dedicated to precision agriculture and sustainability and process data from various sources to meet the needs of all agribusiness operators. We provide technology and expertise and, together, we revolutionise agriculture while respecting tradition.

Hardware

Weather stations, humidity sensors, smart traps and much more. We provide the hardware needed and we process real time data collected by IoT and sensors. Here are just some of the many parameters that our sensors monitor and track:

SOIL MOISTURE AND HUMIDITY
WATER SAVING

Temperature

SOLAR RADIATION
WIND SPEED & DIRECTION

CROP MONITORING & PROTECTION

climatic parametrics
Leaf wetness
Pest management

Where Hardware exists and offers the ability to integrate, we collect, consolidate and process data into our platform.

Software

One integrated digital platform that provides scaleable, robust, configurable and modular solutions. Designed for the agricultural sector, it helps obtain complete transparency of processes, making them more usable and generating value from data, to improve management, monitoring, intervention and precision control of activities and improving sustainability.

It enables governments & Public administrations to manage agricultural payments, processing structural funding within national policies.

We are Strategic Partner of UK Dept of Environment, Food, Rural Affairs, managing new Environmental Land Management, Sustainable Farming initiatives.

We assist land managers, growers, consultants and agronomists improve management of agricultural activities through the platform’s database and artificial intelligence algorithms.

Supply chain managing traceability, crop security, sustainability & food security.

It collects and collates big data, applies artificial intelligence for monitoring crops, arboriculture, viticulture and environmental sustainability, land use analysis and control.

From Earth Observation to
Information Processing

Supporting implementation of sustainable strategy for intensification of agricultural production and precision intervention, reducing costs and improving margins:

  • Multi-sourced information: observation and intervention management
  • Responding to extreme weather events
  • Stress prevention for crops
  • Intervention and prevention of Phyto-pathological threats
  • Soil Health Management
  • Reduced chemical interventions
  • Monitoring and comparing interventions and outputs
  • Increasing effectiveness and efficiency of interventions
  • Preserve quality and quantity of production
  • Supply Chain control and assurance
  • Carbon Capture and management

Services &
Solutions

FOR THE AGRO-INDUSTRY


Some of the services we provide:

The cartographic system is an integrated multilayer support for crop representation, mapping and geo-positioning of registry and procedural elements (samples, analyses, visits, monitoring, activities), drawing of elements relatable to registry entities, visualisation and management of movements of people and vehicles, harvesting and delivery logistics.
It offers complete campaign management with a "top view" approach, which is intuitive and fast, using a cartographic background on which all the useful and user-developed layers are superimposed: land registries, phenological or phytopathological surveys, soil analysis, sampling.

Modern production and/or environmental landscape planning, cannot disregard the use of Digital Soil Mapping. Physical and chemical degradation and fertility loss of cultivated soils represent the main challenges of the coming years. Planning interventions' effectiveness closely depends on accurate and updated information availability. Diagram has made significant investments in training, research, and development, in order to create processing chains and bio-physical models for elaborating digital maps of the soil surface, with the already validated application for arable cropland:
  • Soil erosion
  • Soil Organic Carbon / Soil Organic Matter
  • Texture (% clay, sand, silt)
  • Nitrogen / Phosphorus / Potassium
  • Cation Exchange Capacity
  • PH
  • Electrical Conductivity
These analyses can also enable the use of a digital scorecard that allows to incorporate and process the results of the analysis. The application, therefore, allows data to be historised and monitored over the years, making it possible to assess the effectiveness of the agricultural practices implemented to mitigate a critical situation or to maintain an already virtuous situation.

Precision agriculture allows farms and agri-food chains to make the entire production process more efficient and traceable. Through the use of dedicated machines and software, all field operations from sampling to soil preparation, sowing, fertilisation and harvesting are made more efficient, allowing all operators to do the right thing at the right time and in the right place. The resulting benefits are enormous in terms of both quality and yield, effectively increasing farm income but above all increasing farm sustainability by significantly reducing inputs such as water and fertilisers or simply reducing the use of tractors and machinery in general.

  • Georeferencing and soil mapping: We standardise the process by associating each field with new levels of information for the management of all agronomic activities. We acquire georeferencing from satellites or from the actors themselves by checking cadastral data and/or community contribution databases.
 
  • Creation of homogeneous zones - MUZ: We create MUZ Management Unit Zones by means of variability analysis combined with chemical and physical soil characterization. MUZs are areas that behave uniformly over time and thus become management units for implementing precision farming practices such as variable rate seeding and fertilisation.
 
  • Crop Suitability: By integrating multi-source data we determine the suitability and suitability of the soil for certain crops. Areas identified by the colour red have low suitability for cultivation, while yellow and green areas correspond to medium and high suitability for cultivation respectively.
 
  • Fertilisation and sowing: We generate prescription maps for sowing in order to optimise inputs and operation costs by monitoring historical and forecast weather data, we indicate doses and the best time for sowing.
 
  • Monitoring of the vegetative state

    - Processing NDVI and MSAVI vegetation vigour indices that measure the photosynthetic capacity of crops.

    - Verification of crop presence

    - Verification of anomalies due to climatic events and/or unplanned harvests

    - Identification of areas of criticality

    - Identification of qualitative variability within fields

    - Evaluation of the performance of different plots over the years and with different crops

    - Integration of vigour indices into the fertilisation plan

  • Cover fertilisation: We generate prescription maps for fertilisation in order to optimise inputs and operation costs. In the nutrition plan, we define the fertiliser doses to be applied both pre-sowing and in coverage, fixed or variable doses. We also define fertiliser doses according to the genetic characteristics of the plant.
  • Irrigation Optimization: We make irrigation recommendations based on estimated soil water content and crop requirements. By acquiring data from remote or proximal sources (moisture sensor or weather station) we provide the irrigation plan in terms of frequency and irrigation volumes.
  • Disease Strategy: Assessing possible pathogen attacks and carrying out phytosanitary treatments by providing risk forecast models for pathogen attack defence by integrating climatic and agronomic data. The aim is to intervene early and reduce environmental impact, but also to obtain a risk forecast based on historical data. weather) we provide the irrigation plan in terms of frequency and irrigation volumes. 
  • Yield analysis: We estimate extensive crop yields using trend analysis of historical vegetation indices in the periods between sowing and harvest combined with weather trend analysis, focusing on critical phenological phases.

The electronic treatment registry provides access to farm, field and crop records with the possibility of graphic crop plans and a top view approach using Google GIS mapping. A powerful tool that makes it easy to manage the most complex situations, also thanks to real-time checks on the label constraints of plant protection products, fertilisers and specifications, as well as technical decision support systems such as irrigation, defence, fertilisation plans, weather data.

  • Warehouse management
  • Pesticide treatment management
  • Controls on treatments
  • Printout of treatment register in compliance with d. Lgs 150/2012 and pan
  • Calculation of explicit crop costs for each crop
  • Direct access to labels and safety data sheets (current and historical)
  • Control of regional integrated production specifications and relevant derogations
  • Stock management of all technical means
  • Fertilisation management
  • Irrigation data management (it's possible to create irrigation plans)
  • Management of all cultivation operations
  • Fulfillments and printouts
  • Organic Farming Reports and Controls

Historical and forecast agro-meteorological indices provide useful indications for agronomic farm management and optimisation of agricultural practice and resource use. Soil surveys in the field and the connection of sensors and control units to the platform make it possible to integrate and fine-tune the predefined environmental data, further enriching the database available to the user. The monitoring and thus control of crop progress is ensured by satellite indices and derived colour maps that make it possible to assess the vigour of the vegetation and any uneven crop growth or the water content of the plants and any plant stress.


Furthermore, these specific DSS are available: DOWNLOAD NOW

A complete management of livestock, capable of managing each individual barn, battery or individual animal with various configurations for:

- Batteries (management of animals in groups and not for individual animals).

- Types per species

- Growth States

- Feeding requirements also with automation of feeding operations

- Creation of predefined mixtures or dosing according to requirement-growth.

- Complete consistency reporting

- All reference data about traceability, regulations, genealogy, etc.

This solution allows the management of costs and incomes as well as the automation of operations such as automatic feed calculation, monitoring of purchases and exit, the registration of weight on entry of the animal into the cowshed, on exit from the cowshed and during the stationing period. 

The module is also integrated with the Veterinary Information System and the APP is used to manage the animals and the activities carried out in the barn, such as checking the registration numbers on arrival and recording the stocks.

Using our platform it is possible to detect a series of parameters that help outline the sustainability profile of farms and agro-industries, in particular we can:

- quantify organic carbon in the soil from satellite images that help verify the effectiveness of agronomic practices in relation to the carbon stock

- provide agronomic support for sustainable practices

- do remote monitoring of sustainable agricultural practices (automatic systems that monitor the actual adoption of sustainable agricultural practices that increase soil CO2 stock capacity)

- monitor CO2 emissions thanks to specific dashboards:

    • CO2 map with categorisation of plots according to emissions
    • CO2 emissions per activity and per variety
    • Total emissions/emissions per hectare
    • Comparison of CO2 emissions
    • Comparison of companies/industries and historical trend of CO2 emissions on the farm

A service that supports agricultural insurance management that can assess agricultural risks caused by adverse weather events or monitor the damage as it occurs. Our risk management technology leverages various tools, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data, to optimise risk management in the agricultural sector by offering a service to both farms and banks and insurance companies.

How it works:

    • Risk Management
      • Estimation of risk profile (for specific areas and farms) caused by adverse weather events (such as hail, excessive rainfall, frost, wind gusts, drought and fire)
      • Prediction of the event
      • Event detection (satellite and IoTs)
      • Alert system

    • Damage Assessment
      • Verification of event
      • Verification of affected area and intensity of the damage
      • Verification of actual crops in the damaged field
      • Estimated production loss
      • Estimated loss of value
      • Mobile apps for simplified claims and compensation management

Services &
Solutions

FOR GOVERNMENTS AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS

The solution offers different modules that can be combined to meet the specific needs of each Public Administration: 

  • Identification: to improve land management with automatic identification and completeness of information on land use.
  • Monitoring: to create scalable field knowledge through geospatial intelligence combined with data.
  • Processes: to streamline processes through the monitoring of environmental and sustainability indicators.
  • Compliance: the solution is designed to assess compliance with legislation or guidelines linked to payments and subsidies, promoting the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices.
  • Emergencies: to manage interventions and compensation in response to the consequences of climate change, extreme weather events and disaster damage.

Some case histories

During the 2021 campaign we applied. The prescription maps to bonifiche ferraresi fields.

  • 2000 hectares of soft wheat
  • 2000 hectares tomato

On Soft wheat:

Variable Rate seeding

VRT fertilization

Yield

+
% increase

Seeds

-
% decrease (with new variety selected from SIS)

Nutrition

-
% N decreased 9% p2o5 decreased

57 euro/ha increased income

On Tomato

Variable Rate fertilization

Irrigation optimization

Yield

+
% increase

Nutrition

-
% decrease

Water

-
% decrease

198 euro/ha increased income

In 2022 IBF Servizi provides

Farm management Platform to manage, trace and monitor the entire biofuel supply chain ( croton, evea, castor ) of over 400.000 ha located in Kenya, Angola, Mozambico, Congo, Rwanda, ivory cost involving more than 120.000 farmers.

Farmers can draw boundaries fields and upload logistic documents using the mobile app

Within 2024, farmers will receive their payments, in real time, automatically on their phone after the harvest

Prosecco DOC represents Italy’s leading denomination in terms of volume and value and involves a territory that straddles the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia regions for a supply chain made up of:

    • over 12,000 wine growers
    • almost 1,200 winemakers
    • 360 sparkling wine producers

Results

  • 9 homogeneous areas were found
  • 5 other areas identified by risk parameters

allowed the Consortium to parcel out the viticultural management of the territory and then assess how these risk classes impact the viticultural management.

The path of innovation undertaken by the Consortium together with Abaco represents an important investment aimed at protecting the territory and making the viticultural management more sustainable: the project carried out an innovative zonation that involved not only pedoclimatic analysis of the territory, but also parameters that would allow the Consortum to identify zones by indices of water and thermal risk. The purpose of the new stage of this project is to identify – thanks to EO – those indicators that allow to delimit and perimeter the areas affected by calamitous events.

In 2022, the Ferrari Trento embarked on an innovative collaboration with Abaco to digitize its 100 hectares of vineyards in Trentino. This ambitious project aims to transform traditional viticultural practices through the use of the Abaco Farmer platform, enabling precise acquisition and management of land information.

Hectares managed

Water savings

+
%

Project Highlights:

  • Improved water management: the use of Abaco Farmer has allowed for the integration of detailed vineyard data with information from company weather stations. This approach has made it possible to obtain accurate analytical dashboards, essential for targeted and sustainable water resource management.
  • Timely responses to climate change: the collaboration has equipped Ferrari Trento with the tools to face the challenges posed by climate change. Through specific and representative monitoring, it is possible to quickly adapt to new environmental conditions, ensuring the sustainability and quality of the crops.
Content
Content

A remarkable result

Some results obtained thanks to our precision farming services

We work with