Kontext

In agriculture, the increase in the use of external labor and the outsourcing of almost all the harvesting jobs to contractors has led agricultural companies towards more entrepreneurial production models. The digitalization of the agro-food sector, the increase in the educational level of agricultural entrepreneurs and the growth of companies run by young "under 35" people favor the development of more efficient and sustainable production models capable of "producing more with less". Bovine animal husbandry in general adheres to such general framework: the reduction in the number of farms (-28%) and the number of animals raised (-7%) was offset by the increase in the average size of the herds. In dairy farming there are farms with an average size greater than 100 animals/farm. The strong territorial specialization and the peculiarities of the Lombard territory have led to a further increase in the herd up to over 150 heads/farm on average, with a constant search for increasingly efficient production conditions. Meat zootechnics has a valuable share of produced value despite the not always favorable price dynamics and the changes in consumer preferences that reward production models considered more ethical and sustainable. The use of new technologies such as AFS safeguards the valuable aspects of the milk and beef supply chains: in fact, they redistribute the work towards more managerial and supervisory tasks, improve animal welfare (less competition for food, greater freshness of the feed in the manger, greater tranquility of the herd) and reduces the incidence of human errors in the management of the variability of the unifeed ration.