Originally from Bergamo, he studied in Prague and Vienna and worked in Austria as a scholar and chemist focusing on agricultural and forestry lands.

He was sent to San Michele all’Adige by the Assembly of Innsbruck, tasked with establishing a school of agriculture, with experimental sections, and becoming the director. The Agrarian Institute of S.Michele was thus created. He came in fact from the Klosterneuburg-Vienna experimental Station, where he had studied and researched in the field of oenological and agricultural chemistry. In 1874, after the acquisition of the monastery and the lands of San Michele by the Assembly of Innsbruck, he was chosen then as first director of the school. His job was to revitalise and organise the agricultural potential of the territory in Trentino.

Mach was a scholar and a dynamic organiser and he understood right away the necessity to coordinate the scholastic approaches and works with those of agricultural production: the two environments had to go hand in hand to be a precious source to each other. This method, together with the experimental section, made the institute a virtuous model soon renowned outside the regional and imperial borders, that will remain a guideline for the future. Edmund Mach, indissolubly linked to the agricultural events of the territory, promoted the nascent cooperative example: he was indeed one of the nine members for the establishment of the Federation of cooperative consortia in Trentino, the future Federation of Cooperation in Trentino.