# The Impact of the 4.0 Paradigm in the Italian Agricultural Sector: A Descriptive Survey
## 4 Results  
### RQ1: What Is the Level of Awareness of Agri 4.0 Solutions among Farm Enterprises? The first highlight of the analysis derives from the investigation of the current degree of knowledge of Agri 4.0 solutions within the sample considered. Figure 3 summarizes the results. The level of awareness was measured using a 4-point scale, from a low to a high level of awareness of the solutions, specifically (a) I am not familiar with the solution, with no awareness of solutions existence; (b) I am a little familiar with the solution, meaning having only marginally heard of the solution; (c) I am familiar with the solution at a theoretical level, meaning having a good level of theoretical knowledge; and (d) I am familiar with the solution at a practical level, meaning knowing the solution and having knowledge of practical examples in the field. Figure 3 shows all the solutions proposed within the questionnaire, ordering them from the most to least known. Another important aspect to consider is the statistical distribution of the number of solutions deeply known by the respondents (counting only answers in which the solution is familiar to the respondents). The distribution depicted in Table 8 represents the number of times a certain number of solutions is known at the same time, presenting the percentage over the entire sample and number of respondents. Figure 3: Agri 4.0 solutions awareness level. The table clearly shows that the number of respondents claiming to know more solutions decreases as the number of known solutions increases. The most well-known solutions within the given answer set are by far precision irrigation systems and business management software, followed by two technological solutions that share a similar technological basepoint, i.e., crop and land mapping services through satellite technologies and satellite guides. In this case, the management software solution is the most well known in practice, demonstrating that it is the solution most likely to be implemented by companies. Crop and land mapping though drones deserves a separate discussion, which, despite being in the middle of the ranking for awareness, is one of the least known at the practical level, with only 3% of the respondents indicating that they had seen a practical example of this type of solution. A similar argument can be made for robots for field activities, of which not a single respondent claimed to have any practical knowledge, and remote management and monitoring for indoor crops, as the two least well-known solutions of the solution set. The level of awareness of the solutions identified in the current study can be correlated with the descriptive variables of the analysis used as control variables to check for the presence of trends and patterns. To calculate the level of knowledge, scores were assigned from 0 to 3 in ascending order, here based on the answers given to the question about the level of awareness. To determine the level of awareness for each respondent, the sum of the level for each solution was divided by the maximum obtainable. Figure 4 shows an increased pattern of awareness level related to hectare size of the farm, with the cluster of largest companies having a higher average (45%), median (45%), inferior quartile (33%) and major quartile (55%) than any other cluster. Furthermore, an increasing trend in the awareness of Agri 4.0 solutions is evident with respect to the size of the land worked. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Number of Digital Solutions** & **Respondents (\%)** & **Respondents (Nr.)** \\
**Known Simultaneously** & **Respondents (\%)** & **Respondents (Nr.)** \\ \hline
0 & 28.4 & 190 \\
1 & 17.3 & 116 \\
2 & 13.7 & 92 \\
3 & 11.2 & 75 \\
4 & 9.6 & 64 \\
5 & 7.5 & 50 \\
6 & 4.2 & 28 \\
7 & 3.4 & 23 \\
8 & 2.1 & 14 \\
9 & 1.3 & 9 \\
10 & 0.7 & 5 \\
11 & 0.3 & 2 \\
12 & 0.3 & 2 \\ \hline Total: & 100 & 670 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 8: Statistical distribution of the number of digital solutions known.