BACK TO NATURE

Abstract
In Giussago, in the heart of the Po Valley between Milan and Pavia, stands the first Italian Nature-based Solution valley, a place where regenerative agriculture and technology, circular economy and artificial intelligence are combined to produce development models capable of protecting and enhancing nature , the territory, industry, economy and scientific research. Today this project is called “Simbiosis”, but until a few years ago it was known as NeoruraleHub: here, thanks to advanced agri-tech technologies, the same conditions of soil fertility and biodiversity of the original Po Valley have been recreated.
Back To Nature is a photographic series that retraces the naturalistic experiment of Simbiosi and the research of the Giulio Natta Innovation Center in Giussago. The series focuses on the naturalization of the area called “Cassinazza”, on the adoption of artificial intelligence systems for the management of naturalistic and energy resources, and on the various start-ups dedicated to sustainability that operate and carry out research within the center .

View of the renaturalized "Cassinazza" area in Giussago, Pavia. This is an experiment that lasted over 25 years in which the fields, intensively exploited for decades, were returned to their original condition. Two million trees and bushes have been planted, meadows and wetlands with high and low water have been created, a grove, small rivers, lamination basins for the hydrogeological protection of the territory, canals and woods.

Inside the "Cassinazza" regenerated area, a naturalist monitors some tern eggs laid on an artificial nest. Thanks to the decades-long naturalization of the area, many species of birds, mammals and insects have returned to populate the Po Valley landscape and there are now more than 200 types of birds, 36 dragonflies and more than 2000 plant species.

View of the natural "Cassinazza" area, Giussago, Pavia. The internally furrowed serpentine benefits the biodiversity of the ecotones thanks to the circulation of water. The "Cassinazza" natural area, extending over 1,000 hectares, has been regenerated through the creation of canals, hedges, wet meadows, water meadows, flooded areas, natural filtering areas and replanted with the typical vegetation of the Po Valley which has now disappeared. Nature, left to itself, was therefore able to thrive on its own without any human intervention and an increase in biodiversity of over 153% was measured.

Simbiosi: Back to Nature
It was 1996 when the NeoruraleHub agricultural company decided to go against the trend of the intensive agriculture paradigm by dedicating 400 of its 1700 hectares to nature. That year, a long experiment was started to naturalize an area, following long studies of biodiversity and soil, to transform expanses of tired and exploited agricultural fields into a green area in the image of the prehistoric Po Valley. It was 1996, in fact, when the engineer Giuseppe Natta – son of the Nobel Prize winner for chemistry Giulio Natta – and Piero Manzoni began to modify what, until then, made the Alto Pavese resemble an “agricultural desert”, an expression of a classic yet standardized intensive agriculture in which the hand of man had progressively dismantled the landscape traces of the “Soprana countryside”, as the vast area between the capital of Pavia and the southern perimeter of the province of Milan was defined until the nineteenth century.
The project – now renamed “Symbiosis” – lasted about twenty years and the Cassinazza area was regenerated through naturalistic engineering works such as the creation of canals, hedges, wet areas, water meadows, lamination tanks, natural filtering areas and it was replanted with the typical vegetation of the Po Valley with almost two million plants. The land was thus able to regenerate and host the original fauna and flora which, today, has been reclaiming those spaces from which, over the centuries, it had been removed.

The edge of an agricultural field near Giussago, Pavia. The "Environment Field Margin" is the system of permanent natural areas made up of wetlands and wooded areas, located around the cultivation fields. These areas act as barriers against insect and pest infestations and allow the use of insecticides to be avoided throughout the cultivation process.

View of an agricultural edge near Giussago, Pavia. The Environmental Field Margins are complex and integrated elements made up of woodland strips, grassy clearings with flowers and wetlands which have the aim of concentrating different ecosystems rich in ecotones in a very small space, capable of rapidly developing high levels of plant biodiversity and animal by improving the quality and fertility of the soil.

A sensor monitors the water level within a margin in an agricultural field near Giussago, Pavia.

Nature-based Solution
Piero Manzoni is the co-founder and CEO of Simbiosi. He has numerous managerial experiences under his belt and explains how this project was born: «We wanted to reconstruct an area as it was in the Middle Ages, because we were convinced that by returning to the original conditions of nature, the land would also have enormous benefits. In 1996 we began with an arrangement of the areas, with a gigantic planting work, with the creation of canals, with the redesign of low-water wetlands and others with high waters. We have grown hedges, phragmites [i.e. areas in which helophytes grow, plants that populate marshy areas, editor’s note], marcite [a cultivation technique that involves irrigating a field with spring water throughout the year, editor’s note]. Everything as the studies have shown us this area should be».
Nature, left to itself, was able to prosper on its own without any human intervention and, to date, an increase in biodiversity of 153% has been measured (Sources: Biodiversity Data Journal 2013; Simbiosi). Many species of birds, mammals and insects have returned to populate the Po Valley landscape and there are now more than 36 types of dragonflies and more than two thousand plant species.  The ten-year naturalization initiative of the area is part of the Nature-based Solutions (NbS) recently defined by the European Union as indispensable solutions for sustainability and the challenges caused by climate change: «[…] solutions inspired and supported from nature, efficient in terms of costs and at the same time capable of bringing environmental, social and economic benefits and generating resilience. Solutions of this kind contribute to bringing more and more diverse nature, as well as the characteristics and processes typical of nature, into cities and landscapes through interventions adapted to the local context, efficient in the use of resources and as systemic as possible». (Source: European Environment Agency).

A weather station and sensors inside the "Giulio Natta" Innovation Center in Giussago, Pavia. The different sensors measure meteorological data such as temperature, rainfall, air and soil humidity and which feed into machine learning algorithms that help resource management.

A tractor sows rice in a countryside in Giussago, Pavia.

Agricultural waste derived from rice processing within "Terra e Vita" agricultural company in Giussago, Pavia. The organic waste derived from the cultivation of the territory is subjected to a recovery process and used as organic soil improvers in agriculture, completely eliminating the supply of mineral fertilizers.

Aerial view of the "Nutrient Recovery Center" of Vellezzo Bellini in the province of Pavia. The plant produces soil improvers for agriculture by recovering nutritional elements from organic waste. The NRC's patented technology allows the production of a digestate with high agronomic benefit capable of returning the nutritional elements removed from cultivation to the soil. The distribution of digestate in agricultural land occurs through special machinery that injects it into the soil at a depth of between 10-15 cm. The plant also produces energy in the form of biogas and biomethane.

A stork in its nest on a tower of the "Giulio Natta" Innovation Center in Giussago, Pavia.

Environmental Field Margin
The positive experiment of the naturalized area was then transformed into an agricultural business model and transported to the cultivated fields of the district: it is the Environment Field Margin (EFM) technology which recreates the original environmental conditions of the geographical area of reference at the edge of cultivated fields, dedicating 10% of the arable part to nature. EFM technology creates an ecosystem barrier at the perimeter of the fields that defends the crops themselves, eliminating the use of insecticides, increasing the productivity and quality of the crops and redeveloping the landscape architecture. As Simbiosi explains: «these are complex and integrated elements made up of wooded strips, grassy clearings with flowers and wetlands which have the aim of concentrating different ecosystems rich in ecotones in a very limited space, capable of rapidly developing high levels of plant and animal biodiversity. In this way the agro-environmental activity is limited to occupying 10/15% of the surface dedicated to cultivation, bringing with it the naturalistic and landscape advantages already detected in the district experiment and the possibility of being replicated in many other cases».

In the chemical laboratories of the "Giulio Natta" Innovation Center, Fabio, a 30-year-old biotechnologist, during experiments to produce biomethane from a sample of sewage sludge.

Adam and Eva: AI for the environmental and industrial resources
A walk among the companies and agricultural fields of the district is enough to understand how decisive new technologies have been for the different business models that have developed starting from the work of environmental redevelopment of the territory. Along the edges of the fields and within them there are dozens of advanced meteorological stations and sensors installed in the ground for continuous monitoring of vital parameters.
«Digitalization played a decisive role in the development of our project» explains Vincenzo Della Monica, marketing manager of Simbiosi. «We have disseminated a large number of sensors in the agricultural fields which collect data useful for controlling various environmental parameters, such as the quality of the air and the concentration of fine particles, data on soil humidity and the quantity of water, in order to streamline the use of water and nutritional resources» continues Della Monica.  At the center of the management that combines technology and digitalization is the use of artificial intelligence systems that converge within Adam & Eva, a platform for the control and management of energy and natural resources of the agricultural and industrial production process.

Daniele, a 36-year-old energy engineer, checks the operating parameters of "iChiller" in the "Granarolo" industrial plant in Usmate Velate, Milan. "iChiller" is an innovative system for the production of freezing water without the use of propylene glycol or other chemical elements.

During the verification of the maintenance spaces of the "iChiller" cooling system in the "Granarolo" industrial plant in Usmate Velate, Milan.

An operator at work in the Granarolo dairy production plant in Usmate Velate, Milan.

The Adam & Eva model – says Mauro Lamberti, Head of Technology at Simbiosi – «works with a system of self-adaptive algorithms (machine learning) and is made up of two functions that work in pairs. The “Eva” module acquires consumption data and process quantities from the field and, through a cloud platform, makes them available to the user in real time to control, moment by moment, the flow of resources and their progress through graphs and tables. The information acquired is then transmitted to the “Adam” module which processes the data received from Eva and develops the actions necessary to maximize returns and reduce consumption of natural resources».
Adam & Eva also finds an efficient position in other industrial sectors of the supply chain, where it works in harmony with other digital applications created by Simbiosi to make production processes more sustainable and optimize energy and environmental resources. This is the case of “iChiller“, an innovative system for the direct production of freezing water which, without the use of propylene glycol or other chemical agents, evolves the traditional ice tank systems in which it is necessary to bring the refrigerant carrier fluids above -10 °C, avoiding a large waste of resources and the release into the atmosphere of tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Inside the "Giulio Natta" Innovation Center in Giussago, Fabio, an electronic engineer, monitors the productivity parameters of the "iChiller" system that cools the Granarolo production plant in Usmate Velate, Milan. iChiller is guided by machine learning and event prediction algorithms that constantly monitor both the refrigeration unit and the user's request for ice-cold water, adapting its behavior in order to preserve the machine and its components and at the same time maximize the energy efficiency and drastically reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Gabriele, 31 year old entomologist, inside the climatic chamber of "Crickeat", an innovative start-up that breeds specimens of Acheta Domesticus to produce protein flours inside the "Giulio Natta" Innovation Center in Giussago, Pavia.

Some specimens of Acheta Domesticus eat a courgette inside the "Giulio Natta" Innovation Center in Giussago, Pavia.

Marco, 29 year old biotechnologist, inside the climatic chamber of "Smush Materials", an innovative start-up that produces compostable and natural industrial packaging solutions by growing mushrooms inside the laboratories of the "Giulio Natta" Innovation Center in Giussago , Pavia.

A colony of mushrooms grows on a Petri dish inside the "Smush Materials" climatic chamber at the "Giulio Natta" Innovation Center in Giussago, Pavia.

Some industrial packaging prototypes inside the laboratories of the start-up "Smush Materials". To create the packaging, the company grows mushrooms in a natural substrate obtained from agricultural waste from rice and cereal processing.

The “Giulio Natta” Innovation Center: start-ups in symbiosis
Thanks to the resources derived from agreements with venture funds and from the family office of the founders and from the network of investors, thanks to the Technological Innovation and Research and Development teams and thanks to the management structure which boasts many years of experience in the field of sustainability in international groups and listed companies, the Giulio Natta Innovation Center represents a catalyst for innovation players in the fields of circular economy and Nature-based Solutions. Inside a restored farmhouse from the early twentieth century, the startups in Simbiosis range from agri-tech to artificial intelligence, from the promotion of the circular economy to the reuse of waste materials and consecrate the Giulio Natta Innovation Center as a of excellence devoted to sustainability.
The Innovation Center hosts several companies that have chosen the district as a location to innovate. Among these are MKM Cube, which looks to the future of urban waste collection by producing “smart” bins powered by solar energy that compact waste, maximizing space and collection routes; Planeat.eco, which offers companies and consumers anti-waste lunch breaks, with kits in compostable containers of ingredients already divided into portions and ready for cooking; Smush Materials for the creation of 100% natural and biodegradable packaging thanks to mycelium, the root system of mushrooms which is grown in a substrate obtained from rice processing waste and industrial agri-food by-products as raw materials.