The future of Brazilian agriculture is digital and more than promising

A few days ago, while reviewing old notebooks, I found some personal notes from a report about the closing of the 2009/2010 harvest, with 140 million tons of grains harvested in Brazil. Ten harvests have passed and, according to CONAB, we doubled production and harvested 270 million tons in the 20/21 harvest. Half of what is produced in grains in the country was "built" in a decade and this result opens up space for us to talk about how We look at the future of agribusiness in Brazil and the role of technological innovations that have been acting as a vector of the exponential curve of increased productivity in the field. They say that making projections is very difficult, especially about the future, so let's focus on why we believe in this evolution and leave the expected results for future news.

Since the 70s, agriculture in Brazil has been reinventing itself crop after crop. The driver behind all this is the farmer, who is always evolving and leaving his comfort zone to produce more and more. And on this trip, he has been using "blue gasoline": innovation and technology. In 50 years, our producers have reinvented themselves in the way of managing the soil and planting through Direct Planting; in the way of choosing planting technology, when adopting the first RR Soy biotechnology; in the way of boosting the corn harvest, which today is even larger than the main harvest and is very much anchored in BT corn technologies, which have taken the crop's productivity to another level. Lately, a new frontier for advancing productivity has been emerging: the adoption of data management and digitalization.

We are in an era where there is a lot of talk about data, digital, agriculture 4.0. Translated into everyday life, all of this is nothing more than the use of available digital technologies so that the producer can take care of each part of the plot, with the same care he has always taken for his entire area. The new leap in productivity will be in the detail of the square meter, and that is where digitalization is making a difference. A data-driven approach allows farmers to understand, in detail, the needs of the property, take greater advantage of the value of inputs, find new income opportunities, act on failures with agility and precision, without needing to wait for the next harvest. It's a huge list of benefits and facilities.

Bayer has digital transformation as a strategic pillar (in addition to innovation and sustainability), recognizing it as a key element in boosting agriculture. And, when we look at what we are building together with the farmer, it is gratifying. An example is the pricing model based on productivity returns to the producer and no longer the simple sale of a product, such as pricing a bag of corn seeds. Today, we have more than 200 pilots of this project, in which producers, through the commercial proposal linked to the use of FieldView Seed Prescriptions, negotiate with Bayer not the price of the bag of corn, but rather the sharing of profitability arising from productivity incremental. Businesses like this are only viable with the use of digital technology and trust between the parties.

This year, we also launched the Bayer Carbon initiative in Brazil, which connects Brazilian producers to the carbon ecosystem in agriculture and, once again, Digital makes this reality possible. Joining programs like this demonstrates that Brazilian farmers are at the forefront. The future of Brazilian agriculture is more than promising. We learn to use innovation and technology to overcome challenges and this differentiates and separates those who win from those who fail. Innovation, technology and knowledge. Increasingly, the market and consumers will pay attention to how to produce food and be sustainable. The term and ESG policies, which have existed for more than a decade, have gained traction in recent years and bring with them more opportunities for those who take the lead.

Our agriculture is much more productive than half a century ago, not only because of the technologies and innovations created and coupled, but mainly because of all the knowledge that the farmer possesses. All these technologies and innovations would be of very little value if farmers did not use them. And this continuous effort by producers to learn more and more and seek to adopt new technologies, which generate scientific knowledge, will, once again, allow us to transform Brazilian agriculture. Count on Digital in agriculture for this.

Abdalah Novaes, business leader at Climate FieldView, Bayer's digital platform, for Latin America