The tech company xFarm Technologies and Barilla, a symbol of Made in Italy food products in Italy and around the world, announce the complete digitalisation of the Barilla basil supply chain. Calculation of emissions, complete traceability and efficiency along the supply chain, these are the main objectives of the operation. Not only that, thanks to blockchain technology, Barilla will be able to guarantee maximum transparency towards the end consumer. The project, which started as early as 2023 with an initial pilot phase, is now fully active.

Digitalization involves all 25 companies and cooperatives supplying basil, a fundamental ingredient for the production of the famous Barilla Pesto line, marketed throughout Europe. 310 hectares of land touched by the activity. But the advantages are not only for those who manage the supply chain: a large portion of the work done was aimed at simplifying the lives of the contributing farmers. In fact, the Barilla Farming platform has been integrated with the DSS created specifically for Barilla by the CNR, and has also incorporated other systems, previously used within the supply chain, in a single place where the farmer can enter all the data.

Thanks to the new technological infrastructure developed by xFarm Technologies, the contributing agricultural companies track all the primary information of the land, from the cultivated plots, to the individual activities carried out, archiving all data within the Barilla Farming platform, developed by xFarm Technologies with the Cnr and already in use within the Carta del Mulino soft wheat supply chain. This makes it possible to effectively calculate the impact of each individual company: numerous environmental parameters, such as the carbon footprint, water footprint, acidification and eutrophication, are in fact calculated on the basis of the agronomic activities carried out and displayed directly from the Barilla Farming app. A broader view of the operations carried out along the supply chain guarantees greater process efficiency, including the phases from transformation to factory packaging, thanks to Connecting Food technology, total compliance with the specifications by suppliers and the identification of the most virtuous practices , to the full advantage of the freshness and authenticity of the finished product, and sustainability.

The final objective of the digitalization activity will be to make a real basil identity card available to the consumer. Thanks to the collaboration with Connecting Food, the path of the basil from the field, through its transformation and packaging in jars, becomes transparent for the consumer thanks to the scanning of a QR Code, present on the packaging of Barilla Pesto alla Genovese and its variant without 'garlic, it will be possible to know the place where basil is grown, including textual and photographic information on the producing farm, collecting data on the stages from the field to canning. Blockchain technology will guarantee the authenticity of all information, thus giving the consumer the opportunity to be certain of the origin, route and freshness of the Barilla basil.

“The partnership with Barilla is long-standing, it began in 2020 with the development of the Barilla Farming platform and the digitalisation of the soft wheat supply chain. We are therefore proud to be able to expand the perimeter of digitalisation to a further key supply chain such as that of pesto, one of the company's flagship products and a symbol of Italian agri-food", explains Matteo Vanotti , CEO of xFarm Technologies.