CCAB Agro signs partnership with Geodrone

A CCAB Agro begins investments in the digital and precision agriculture area. The company has just signed a partnership with Geodrone, a research, monitoring and digital data processing company in agriculture, currently present in more than 600 thousand hectares of crops in Matopiba - Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia -, in addition to Rio Grande do South and Goiás. The result of this meeting will be called CCAB Digital - Powered by Geodrone and is already ready to reach the entire national territory. The call segments smart agri These are investment priorities for the company, guided by its shareholders: 21 cooperatives of rural food and textile fiber producers. Together, they represent around 55 thousand farmers in Brazil.

According to the CEO of CCAB Agro, Jones Yasuda, the concern with seeking solutions for farmers to achieve more productivity, with reduced costs and in a sustainable manner, is a constant at CCAB. “It’s not about following a market trend. We prospect investments that are truly relevant to the shareholder, who, at the same time, is our client,” he argues. Also according to Yasuda, the choice for Geodrone was due to the proven effectiveness of the services offered, the applicability of the technology, and the suitability of the partner, currently based in Western Bahia, but operating in the country's major agricultural production hubs.

The synergy between CCAB Agro and Geodrone was fundamental in choosing a project for investment. “In this partnership, we replicate the same logic used in product registration. We listen to rural food and fiber producers, understand their pain and seek the best solution for their demand. We detected a farmer's need and a technological solution that already existed, but was limited to a restricted audience. Our strategy was to give Geodrone more robustness, expanding its reach and capacity to work, including in technology research and development”, explains the commercial director of CCAB Agro, Emiliano Mellis. The digital solutions will be sold by CCAB to its customer base in this 2019-2020 harvest, in Matopiba. CCAB will evaluate the expansion of service coverage to other regions for the next harvest.

The New Business Development Manager at CCAB Agro, Fabio Marques highlights the wide acceptance of Geodrone in Matopiba. “Our research detected an approval rate of 97% among the partner’s farmer-client base”, reveals Marques. He says that CCAB will preserve the identity of Geodrone, a company founded in 2015, empowering the brand through its association with CCAB Agro, today the fastest growing company in Brazil in its segment. “Our client will have the tool at hand, in a customized way. In the future, we intend to add new applications to the platform, according to farmers' demand. Our goal is to be a validator of technologies that are truly useful for our clients’ businesses,” says Marques. 

Geodrone provides weather forecasting and precision agriculture services, in addition to various types of monitoring, such as machines in the field, pests and diseases, drone flights and precision agriculture. The central concept is based on ease of access, autonomy and interpretation of collected data. “Correct information processing and diagnosis are the difference between a good and a bad decision. The ability to provide this quick and complete response is our differentiator”, explains the entrepreneur and founder of Geodrone, Ricardo Reis. According to him, Geodrone has a database made up of a network of more than 3,3 rain gauges in the Matopiba region, and this increases the level of accuracy in climate forecasts.

“The more rural producers acquire the service, the greater the data storage and the system becomes more intelligent. This guarantees more assertive responses for the farmer”, says Reis. The partnership with CCAB Agro, in his opinion, will boost the research and development of new technologies and the improvement of existing ones.