​Information Agriculture

Agriculture is experiencing a moment of historical transition in which the main input becomes quality information. In the history of humanity, there was initially a long period of experimental agriculture, during which knowledge was passed down through generations and improvements were obtained through observation of nature. From the 19th century onwards, with acceleration in the 20th century, science defined a new era of agricultural expansion, in which scientific systematization brought great advances in the fields of agronomy, biotechnology, agrochemicals and machinery. We are at the beginning of a new era, in which experience and science are being added to decisions based on an increasing amount of information.

Precision agriculture, in which inputs are applied according to the needs of each portion of the crops, thanks to tools such as GPS, software and sophisticated equipment, is just the first manifestation of greater visibility of information agriculture. The dozens of critical decisions that producers make each harvest, with a direct impact on productivity and profitability, require more than just the knowledge, experience and insight of farmers and their technical advisors. In a digitally connected world and society, a huge amount of data is generated daily on the most diverse topics. In the business world, best practices recommend decisions based on facts and data, accompanied by continuous improvement. In agriculture, we must follow the path of decisions based on numbers and data. By mapping areas, precision agriculture allows knowledge of details lost in the increase in scale of past decades.

New techniques allow increasingly detailed knowledge of soils, crops, machinery operations and harvests. Everything is connected and stored digitally, being observed from space via satellite or with sensors buried in the ground. Soon, continuous and wireless monitoring, directly to the producer's cell phone, will stop being fiction or novelty and become a daily tool. Maps will no longer represent hectares, they will represent meters and soon we will be looking at plant by plant. New sensors will allow analysis results to be obtained in seconds or even in real time, instead of taking weeks in laboratories.

To move in this direction, rural management must be continually improved, getting used to using data in decisions. This requires cultural, educational and technical changes, but it is a one-way path to having world-class rural companies, ready for the new agriculture. Strategically as a country, we must develop significant parts of these technologies in Brazil, so as not to become a simple field for the application of imported technologies. In this context, each new tool must add new information, which will be used in conjunction with what is already available, adding layers of data to assist in decisions that must always challenge the limits of productivity.