A roundtable discussion, organized as part of the G7 Young People initiatives, addressed the issue of new professional roles required by an increasingly innovative and technological agriculture. The need to increase yields while preserving natural resources calls for the use of advanced digital and robotic systems, which young agricultural entrepreneurs must already be capable of managing today.

The future of agriculture is highly technological, driven by robots and artificial intelligence, and this was the focus of various initiatives within the G7 Young People framework yesterday. Among the key events was a roundtable on the topic “Artificial Intelligence and Youth Entrepreneurship in the Agri-food Sector,” which tackled the formation of new professional profiles tailored to the specific needs of the agricultural sector. The meeting, opened by a greeting from the Minister of University and Research Anna Maria Bernini, took place on the exceptional stage of the Ortigia theater, where numerous esteemed speakers from the academic and entrepreneurial worlds, including Danilo Monarca and Pierluigi Rossi from the Department of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences at the University of Tuscia, Gian Luca Gregori, Rector of the Polytechnic University of the Marche, Mariateresa Maschio, President of FederUnacoma, and Alessio Bolognesi, FederUnacoma’s head for digital, robotics, and artificial intelligence, took turns presenting.

Today, agriculture faces a challenging mission, as stated during the meeting: to increase production while safeguarding natural resources, particularly water and soil organic matter. To achieve this, it must manage extremely complex parameters that, as Alessio Bolognesi explained in his speech, require ever-increasing digitalization and the massive use of artificial intelligence systems. Modern agriculture relies on intelligent, highly automated machines such as drones and robots, which young people must manage today and even more so in the near future. Agriculture is, after all, a significant technological challenge, but it is also a fascinating journey in the relationship between humans and machines. “The agricultural landscapes envisioned by science fiction since the 19th century and throughout the 20th century,” said Mariateresa Maschio, “have now become reality; they speak the language of new generations and inspire them to design their future in agriculture, to imagine new scenarios, with all the science and creativity that it requires.”