October 26th and 27th the “Forestalia” fair was held at the Piacenza Expo (Italy). On the 26th CONAIBO and CNR, the Italian Research Council, jointly organized a workshop for the Italian forestry sector titled “Forest mechanization in the new Millennium: progress and precision tools for the Italian forest enterprises“.

Introductions, presentations and a live demonstration 

The workshop agenda included an introduction by representatives of the regional and national sector association, including the National President of the main national forest owners’ association, Mr. Caliari (for Federforeste), the National President of the largest farmer’s association, Mr. Coldiretti, and the local representative of another important farmer’s association, Dr. Comellini (for Confagricoltura).

This session was followed by the presentations on the situation of Italian forest enterprises highlighting some best practice examples by Marco Baldini, the President of Piacenza Loggers’ Association and a CONAIBO member, Alberto Cadei, the CONAIBO Technical Director, and Raffaele Spinelli (CNR IBE).

Last part of the meeting was specifically devoted to TECH4EFFECT, with a presentation by Raffaele Spinelli offering a general view of the TECH4EFFECT project and its main results so far, and by Giulio Cosola (CONAIBO) giving a live demonstration of the SILVISMART Efficiency Portal named “SILVISMART Portal – concept, how it works and utility for forest enterprises”. These presentations were followed by an interactive workshop showing the SILVISMART Portal with a Q & A session. The meeting was very well received and attended by more than 100 interested parties from the area.

Some impression of Forestalia 2019 ((c) G. Cosola (CONAIBO) & CNR).

Conclusions of the Q & A with regional foresters

After the debate with foresters at the Forestalia 2019, the following six important conclusions can be made:

• Push for a more thorough management of Italian forests as currently only about 30 % of the national wood increment is used.
• Take advantage of the big economic and commercial potential (i. e. new employees, etc.) behind all of this uncut wood.
• Recover the Italian forest production chain and make it more competitive in a increasing globalized system.
• Improve forest and property legislation – since in Italy wide forest properties are abandoned creating a world of small forest properties, whose owner often live abroad, sometime don’t know how to actually own a forest overseas and/or simply don’t care about their property.
• Improve the safety trainings for foresters.
• Improve big data management to improve the efficiency of forest enterprises – SILVISMART can actually fill this gap if regional specifics are accounted for.

Some more impressions of Forestalia 2019 ((c) G. Cosola (CONAIBO) & CNR).