Integrated agronomic intelligence in the fruit and vegetable sector: technology to protect margins against crises and climate change
- In a context of rising costs and environmental volatility, field data is becoming a strategic industrial asset: yields up by 5% to 10%, water use reduced by 40%, and fertilizers and crop protection products down by 20%, helping safeguard the economic sustainability of the supply chain.
- Roberto Mancini, CEO of Diagram Group: “Today, the fruit and vegetable supply chain faces an urgent need to change its paradigm in order to survive in an increasingly complex market and under unprecedented climate pressure. Digital innovation is not a cost, but a competitive advantage.”
Jolanda di Savoia (Fe), May 13, 2026 – The Italian fruit and vegetable sector is currently undergoing a period of profound transformation, caught between the squeeze of ever-shrinking profit margins (rising production costs due to geopolitical crises and wars) and climate volatility that makes every season an uncertain gamble.
A paradigm shift: towards integrated agronomic intelligenceTo address these challenges, Diagram, a leader in agrifood digitalisation, is promoting an approach that goes beyond generic technology to adopt a model of integrated agronomic intelligence. A vision capable of connecting data collected in the field with that from the warehouse and the commercial sector, transforming information into a concrete industrial lever, with measurable impacts on the efficiency, profitability and sustainability of the supply chain.
“The results in the field of this new philosophy demonstrate that digital innovation is not a cost, but the most effective tool for protecting business margins,” comments Roberto Mancini, CEO of Diagram Group. “Seeing an increase in average yield of between 5 and 10 per cent means providing concrete solutions for the economic and environmental sustainability of our partners. Our goal is to break down the information barriers between the field and the market, and to guarantee companies the forecasting precision that is today the only real competitive advantage available.”
Current challenges amid climate change and geopolitics: reduced margins, rising costs. The current scenario sees agricultural businesses and cooperatives operating under increasing regulatory pressure, with input costs rising against a backdrop of extremely unstable selling prices. In the absence of precise monitoring tools, profitability per hectare risks dwindling until it disappears, exacerbated by plant stress and water shortages that accumulate silent yet significant losses on the balance sheet. Furthermore, the lack of integration within the supply chain often causes a mismatch between production and demand, generating avoidable waste and serious logistical inefficiencies.
Improving planning and management. To reverse this trend, efficiency must now extend to the planning phase and administrative management. The adoption of advanced digital systems reduces the margin of error in harvest forecasting, whilst the automation of record-keeping via the farm logbook halves administrative time and eliminates the risk of non-compliance with CAP programmes. At the same time, monitoring ESG parameters — such as carbon footprint and water consumption — not only improves margins per plot thanks to pricing based on actual quality, but also opens up access to large-scale retail premiums, subsidised loans and the carbon credit market.
Technological solutions to stay in the market. Maintaining competitiveness necessarily involves the adoption of smart mapping and variable-rate prescription maps integrated with decision support systems (DSS). Thanks to these tools, fertilisation and irrigation are no longer based on rough estimates, but on data-driven agronomic decisions, based on the actual conditions of soil, crops and climate. The results speak for themselves: a 20% reduction in the use of fertilisers and plant protection products and up to 40% less water consumption. At the same time, average yield per hectare has increased by between 5 and 10%, whilst the proportion of non-compliant produce has fallen by up to 15% thanks to continuous satellite monitoring, which can identify diseases weeks before damage becomes visible to the naked eye.
“The fruit and vegetable sector is now facing an urgent need: to change its paradigm in order to survive a complex market and unprecedented climatic pressure,” Mancini points out. “We are convinced that the answer no longer lies in generic technology, but in true integrated agronomic intelligence, capable of transforming data into a strategic industrial lever.”