New technologies arrive in the field

The technological evolution of the agricultural market over recent years has been great, especially in the areas of electrification, connectivity and distance communication. One of the main trends in the sector is the advancement of electric motors in the various drive systems for machines and implements, replacing mechanical or electro-hydraulic ones.

The focus of electrification is to increase the precision and flexibility of systems, as well as enabling new functionalities, which are not possible to achieve with traditional systems, such as making faster adjustments according to environmental variables, receiving error alerts and monitoring operations. by telemetry, among many other resources.   

Another trend is the advancement of fully connected machines. An example of this is a sugarcane transshipment truck or tractor, which follows a sugarcane harvester on automatic pilot. In addition to operating at the appropriate speed and position for unloading, the vehicle does not travel over the roots, which remain inside and outside the soil, avoiding impacts on the productivity of the next cycle.   

At the heart of every business, connectivity provides great benefits for a farm. With new technologies that provide real-time access to information from the fleet operating in the field, rural producers can make decisions with greater assertiveness, such as identifying the ideal time to start harvesting or sowing, for example.   

Currently, the farmer wants to connect all the productive means of a farm with a focus on more accurate business management, which makes it possible to increase productivity and increase the reliability of the fleet. During harvest season, avoiding unscheduled downtime means preventing major losses to agribusiness.   

One of the main challenges for making full use of these and other technologies is improving infrastructure in Brazil, especially in rural-based telecommunications. Currently, infrastructure already represents an obstacle to the use of embedded technologies available in machines, innovations that could bring fantastic results to the economy.   

Today agribusiness is the flagship of the Brazilian economy, as it accounts for a large portion of GDP. Therefore, it is essential to seek routes for the full use of this great Brazilian asset, the agricultural machinery industry, which projects Brazil not only as an important machinery park, but also as a developer of machinery for tropical agriculture.   

These and other issues will be debated during the 10th SAE BRASIL Symposium on Agricultural Machines, which will bring together leaders from manufacturers, assemblers, entities and consultancies. Anyone interested in the subject is invited to the meeting, which will be held on August 30th, at the Federation of Industries of Rio Grande do Sul (FIERGS), in Porto Alegre.