In Italy, about 160 fatal accidents per year have occurred recently in agriculture, most of them involving agricultural machinery. The most frequent cause of fatal events is the tractor overturning. One of the opportunities to monitor the trend of agricultural tractors fatal overturning is a meticulous search for information on the numerous web portals, at national and local level. In fact, in their information purposes are also included the recording, practically in real time, of significant details about each fatal event, such as the place of the accident, the year, the month and the day of the week of occurring, the victim’s age, gender and nationality, etc. This article is describing the results of the monitoring of fatal tractor overturning accidents in the period of 2008–2019 in Italy. In the 12 years of the survey, 1414 fatal accidents were recorded, most of them occurring in the spring and summer months. The region with the highest cumulative number of fatal events was Tuscany (143). The majority (58.8%) of the victims were over 60, while 71.4% of accidents occurred during field work. Most (57.6%) of the tractors involved in the fatal events did not have rollover protective structures (ROPS), while 19.4% were equipped with a two-post foldable front roll-bar, which, however, was in the lowered position at the time of the accident. In most cases, the tractors involved were obsolete and in poor maintenance conditions, and did not comply with general and specific laws on work safety. To improve the situation, the introduction of the tractor training certificate for the drivers and the periodical inspection for tractors, as well as the issuing of significant financial supports to encourage the replacement of the old models with modern more safe models, are the most effective actions to be put into practice.

Viticulture involves significant levels of machinery traffic, causing heavy soil compaction. In particular, the compaction of the subsoil is increased; a deep tillage could certainly solve the problem, but the risk of damage to the plants’ root system is high. The aim of this study was to investigate the trend of both the top- and the sub-soil compaction in a hillside vineyard located in Tuscany (Italy), investigating different machine-implement combinations, i.e., self-propelled machinery or narrow tractor coupled to implements. The tests were repeated periodically along the entire growing season, approximately every 6–8 weeks (end of May, end of July and first decade of October). A single test included at least 50 sample measurements, recorded randomly along each inter-row investigated. In the surveyed field, the inter-rows were alternatively covered with grass, or tilled in the top layer during the previous wintertime. Two experimental test sets were developed: the first involved the use of two implements (a sprayer and a grape harvester) towed by narrow tractors, while in the second the pesticide distribution and the harvesting were performed with a properly equipped self-propelled tool carrier. All the other farming operations were executed using the same implements in both cases. Balanced use of the self-propelled tool carrier and the traditional tractor-implement combination allows a better distribution of the soil compaction (in particular in the top-soil), thus improving the root-growing efficiency.

Incorrect pesticide use in plant protection often involve a risk to the health of operators and consumers and can have negative impacts on the environment and the crops. The application of artificial intelligence techniques can help the reduction of the volume sprayed, decreasing these impacts. In Italy, the production of ready-to-eat salad in greenhouses requires usually from 8 to 12 treatments per year. Moreover, inappropriate sprayers are frequently used, being originally designed for open-field operations. To solve this problem, a small vehicle suitable for moving over rough ground (named “rover”), was designed, able to carry out treatments based on a single row pass in the greenhouse, devoted to reduce significantly the sprayed product amount. To ascertain its potential, the prototype has been tested at two growth stages of some salad cultivars, adopting different nozzles and boom settings. Parameters such as boom height, nozzle spacing and inclination, pump pressure and rover traveling speed were studied. To assess the effectiveness of the spraying coverage, for each run several water-sensitive papers were placed throughout the vegetation. Compared to the commonly distributed mixture volume (1000 L/ha), the prototype is able to reduce up to 55% of product sprayed, but still assure an excellent crop coverage.