# The Impact of the 4.0 Paradigm in the Italian Agricultural Sector: A Descriptive Survey
###### Abstract  
This paper investigates how much Italian farms are involved in the so-called \"Agriculture 4.0\" (Agri 4.0) journey. The paper focuses on analyzing the knowledge and adoption levels of specific 4.0-enabling technologies while also considering the main benefits and obstacles. A descriptive survey was carried out on a total of 670 respondents related to agricultural companies of different sizes. The findings from the survey demonstrate that Italian farms are in different positions in their journey toward the Agri 4.0 paradigm, mainly depending on their size in terms of revenues and land size. Furthermore, there are strong differences concerning both the benefits and obstacles related to the adoption of the Agri 4.0 paradigm, here depending on the technology adoption level. Regarding future research, it would be interesting to carry out the same study in other countries to make comparisons and suitable benchmark analyses. Although scholars have debated about the adoption of technologies and the benefits related to the Agri 4.0 paradigm, to the best of the authors' knowledge, no empirical surveys have been carried out on the adoption level of digital solutions in agriculture in specific countries. Agriculture 4.0; smart agriculture; digitalization; descriptive survey; digital technologies Article  
The Impact of the 4.0 Paradigm in the Italian Agricultural Sector: A Descriptive Survey  
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manufacturing, which is already widely used in industry [5]. In other cases, scholars have used the term \"smart farming\" [6,7] or \"digital farming\" [8]. All these terms can be seen as synonyms, so for the current paper, the term Agri 4.0 will be used for simplicity purposes. Scholars have focused on how digital technologies impact the agricultural sector [9,10] and how the diffusion of the Agri 4.0 paradigm can transform production processes and business strategy [4]. Although this paradigm has been investigated in the literature, presenting concrete examples of categorization of the possible benefits, obstacles, and dedicated digital technologies, there is no pervasive study focusing on the knowledge of digital solutions in agriculture and their degree of utilization. Moreover, the scientific literature presents no contributions when it comes to surveying the state of knowledge of the solutions among farmers and their degree of use, as well as the impacts received in using these solutions, both in general terms and specifically in the Italian context. In addition, research on Agri 4.0 neglects the use of empirical methods, such as empirical surveys, to develop scientific results from information from farmer practitioners. The few empirical surveys carried out by scholars have tended to focus on other drivers or on a single aspect throughout the whole questionnaire, such as the ones by [PERSON] [11] and [PERSON] [12]. In an attempt to fill the above-mentioned literature gaps, the following research questions have been formulated:  
RQ1: What is the level of awareness of Agri 4.0 solutions among farm enterprises? RQ2: What is the level of adoption of Agri 4.0 solutions? RQ3: What are the main benefits perceived in adopting Agri 4.0 solutions? RQ4: What are the main challenges perceived in adopting Agri 4.0 solutions? The research questions were set based on a reference scheme developed by the authors, which is presented in Figure 1.  
In particular, RQ1 and RQ2 aim at investigating the technological issues concerning Agri 4.0, while RQ3 and RQ4 investigate the effects in terms of the benefits and obstacles of the previous research questions. Therefore, the present paper addresses the Agri 4.0 paradigm, aiming to gather evidence from the current state-of-the-art in the Italian agricultural context.