Knowing your property, your fleet and the products available does not mean making the best use of the potential of each one. Some technologies available on the market can help create strategies to better control the management of crops and available assets.
Agriculture. A giant and complex challenge in nature, thousands of interactions and chemical reactions happening every moment and a daily search for high productivity, with greater scale and lower cost.
In this constant race in the search for solutions that increase the profitability of field operations, technological development has grown a lot, leaving us today in a scenario where there are so many available technologies that we are not yet prepared to implement and take advantage of them all.
Brazil uses the most modern in seeds, crop protection, soil management and machinery. Even with so many resources, the desired results are not being achieved in the fields and no one can say exactly why.
Climatic factors are always in question and there is no doubt that the droughts of recent years have been very damaging to agriculture. But is that the only problem? According to the MT Foundation, 50% of crop potential is lost during management. Pesticides being applied outside of the ideal time, with the wrong sprayer nozzle, on the wrong crop and even with incorrectly calculated dosages are common episodes on farms.
But, how to change this scenario? More and more responsibilities are delegated to teams without worrying about how the information is being passed, whether it will be recorded and can be verified later. The lack of effective tools that allow the recording of activities in the field and the consequent alignment of the entire team are the major problems faced today.
With increasingly technical management, each plot with its own history, strategies, varieties, susceptibilities to different pests and diseases, it becomes more difficult to keep everything up to date. Without reliable information, it is impossible to make assertive decisions.
The producer, in this scenario, who wants to see the business as a company, wants to know the return on investment of his crops, and without adequate information and records, the technical team feels very pressured and the owners are suspicious.
Therefore, how can we monitor threats, make fewer mistakes and be more proactive during the operation without increasing bureaucracy?
Today we no longer need to memorize some things, not even our spouse's phone numbers. Another sign of this modernity was an interview with one of the founders of the GPS application Waze. He was on his way to the airport and asked his son to take him, but he said he couldn't because his cell phone was out of battery and he didn't know how to get to the airport without the app.
On some properties we visited, some producers reported that they don't really need records, as it's all in their heads and they are on the farm every day. It is essential to have a record of operations, and the information must be standardized. Otherwise, it is not possible to make comparisons between farms or understand the reasons why some varieties need more insecticides than others, or what are the main reasons for delays in spraying.
Decision-makers in the process must plan the information that is essential to avoid bureaucratizing the work of their team, avoiding reworking the paper for the computer, involving other people, as typing errors and incorrect reports are common without adequate tools.
It is also necessary to plan the routines and formats in which information is collected, as feeding a cost system, for example, every fortnight after operations have been carried out just to have a history of records of what happened creates the opportunity for some actions to be from the outside and the end result is masked.
Having the warehouseman's stock movement notebook, the agronomist's recommendation notebook and more spreadsheets with duplicate information, in addition to consuming precious time, can be a cause for complications when something goes wrong in the operation. What information will be correct? And these events can be taken to all activities in the cycle, such as planting, fertilizing, spraying and monitoring.
Ideally, the records should always be at hand and available so that they can give the entire team an integrated view of aspects of the crop, from crop growth conditions, threat situation (pests/diseases), chemical or biological controls already carried out , as well as their cost. It is only possible to have good results through good decisions with the correct information, at the right time and with the appropriate resources.
It's been 18 days since plot 2 was monitored! Pests must have greatly reduced productivity! The frequency with which information must be collected is critical. There is no point in having pest monitoring information from a field 20 days ago, for example.
Let's suppose you left your wallet open on the table with R$100.000,00 available to spend between five people on the farm, and with each withdrawal you just need to leave, if you want, a piece of paper written down with the amount. Could you make a report on who took it and what it was spent on?
It is clear that many farms have managed their stock in this way. It's common to hear a story like this: "I need a thousand liters of insecticide T to spray those fields tomorrow. The agronomist recommends it, based on his spreadsheet, but when he goes to do it the next day, he receives information that is no longer available.” If you don't record the information on time, in addition to the obvious operational problems, you spend a huge amount of time on stock counts, as well as creating a climate of distrust among the team.
In short, the moment in which information is recorded is fundamental to increasing the trust of the information and the security of the team.
Information is power, and it brings the benefit of innovating the management of operations on farms. The information gives operational teams power over threats from pests, diseases, weeds, performance and the way inputs are being applied in the field.
Receiving this information in an acceptable time and reaching decision makers to facilitate the decision process is essential to improve response time to threats in the field and avoid unnecessary losses and costs.
Well-organized information can measure whether your farm's objectives are being met, for example, “zero errors in stock”, or “improve the timing of spraying”, are some examples. On a farm that has well-structured records, with a very clear and defined routine, it is easy to understand, for example, whether the consumption of pesticides is as planned or whether caterpillar controls are being efficient.
Being able to measure objectives through management information can create a learning atmosphere on your farm. Organized and reliable data leads to important discussions among the technical team. As an example, the agronomist notices a rate of pests much higher than normal, even though he carries out all the sprays at the correct time, with the right doses. He meets with the team of pest monitors and those responsible for spraying to understand whether the operation was carried out well. Cross-referencing the data with phenology, rainfall and spraying times, they come to the conclusion that the time of day must be changed to have better control efficiency. This creates a great opportunity to train employees on how to do things differently and perform better.
It is common to hear from producers, who use software to manage their management such as Farmbox, that the farm's technical team feels more confident, that there is better communication and that, instead of filling out spreadsheets, they have more time to look what is really important.
The growth and success of your property will be determined by consistency in results. And these results can only be achieved if they have been recorded and measured so that your team constantly reaches the desired goals and targets.
Alexandre Figueiredo Fachinello, Checkplant Sistemas SA
Article published in issue 169 of Cultivar Máquinas
Receive the latest agriculture news by email
Receive the latest agriculture news by email
