Digital agriculture brings innovation to the field and seeks to contribute to sustainability challenges

The modern way of life is permeated by people's ability to generate knowledge, mobility and connectivity. Everything is connected, from the countryside to large urban centers. The reality of agribusiness has changed a lot in recent years through digital agriculture. The field, as it was in the past, needed to reinvent itself to meet demands that continue to challenge global sustainability and are still a priority for humanity: food production and environmental conservation.

There are 7 billion people on the planet and Brazil, according to FAO, a United Nations body focused on food security, has a fundamental role in mitigating hunger in the world. But how to increase production sustainably? In this context, technology sowed a revolution in the countryside and transformed Brazilian agriculture into a hotbed of modernity. It is no coincidence that the representation of agribusiness in the national GDP jumped from ¼ to 1/3 at the end of 2017. A new era of increasing sustainability begins.

Produce more with less

Increasing the production of quality food and alternative energy in the most assertive way possible through the rational use of resources, especially scarce ones – and their applications – is the topic on the agenda. In other words, technology has become essential to guarantee productivity in the field, while at the same time directly contributing to environmental conservation. It is on fertile national soil, with the opportunity for three annual harvests, that investments in pioneering technologies are growing that will guarantee the flourishing of a stronger economy and allow the production of foods essential to life, with the preservation of natural resources. In the current conditions of the planet, sustainability implies going beyond the relationship with nature. To aim for "development", "modernization", "world market" and "consumer goods" it is necessary to achieve intelligent management of both natural and "human resources".

Solutions in favor of more sustainable agriculture

Drastic changes that were necessary, such as the mechanization of the field, have already proven that the workforce would not run out. On the contrary, it became qualified and protection techniques evolved. One example is the current virtuous cycle of sugarcane. The Law that made the mechanization of crop harvesting compulsory, close to completing 5 years, brought, in addition to machines for the sugarcane fields, the end of burning; a rudimentary practice that was adopted at the time of manual harvesting. Today, with 100% mechanization in the sugarcane fields of the segment leaders, without the emission of greenhouse gases, the sugarcane cycle sequesters more carbon than it emits. Despite all efforts, the occurrence of fires is still a tragedy for sugarcane fields. And this is where technology comes in to change this panorama, mitigate and solve this and other urgent demands. Significantly reducing the time it takes to identify large fires, correct and avoid failures in production lines through real-time monitoring and being punctual in the application of inputs to guarantee quality food is already a reality."

Big steps taken by industry giants towards innovation

Last harvest (2017/2018), during the driest winter of the last 30 years in the Northwest region of the State of São Paulo, Tereos, the third largest sugar producing group in the world, began the development of the ORION pilot project (acronym for Observed Remote Information from Orbital Navigation). The new investment comes to add efforts to the initiatives that the company has already been carrying out to prevent and combat fires. The project uses a pioneering satellite monitoring tool developed by the company GMG Ambiental, from São José do Rio Preto.

The service, based on orbital georeferencing, uses 13 satellites and allows remote monitoring, with the automatic sending of event alerts directly to the Tereos Control Center, located at the Cruz Alta industrial unit, in Olímpia (SP). The satellites contracted by GMG Ambiental are operated by government agencies – including the American Space Agency (NASA) and the American Meteorological Agency (NOAA) – and private companies.

Tereos invested around R$1 million throughout the year for the development and implementation of GMG. "One of the main objectives of this tool is to further improve agility in firefighting, monitoring and support for the intelligence system for brigade management, among other features, which are used to allocate resources", explains Edilberto Bannwart, Director of Sustainability at Tereos. The precise location facilitates the logistics of combat actions, reducing the time spent moving combat trucks and the nearest brigade members by 50%. The tool also makes it possible to indicate rural routes that allow better traffic to reach the fire.

John Deere has practices aimed at reducing pollutants and low-carbon savings, with technological solutions that seek more practical connections with the customer and the field. Among the actions, the company's commitment to providing environmental improvements throughout the world stands out, with global and public goals to reduce the use of water and energy (EcoEfficiency Goals), increase the percentage of recycling of its waste and with a focus on use engineering to further improve its products and services on environmental issues; the acquisition of Blue River Technology, a robotics startup based in Silicon Valley, which identifies plants in the field that need more fertilization or the application of agricultural pesticides; the Rural Connectivity project, which brings internet to Brazilian farmers so that technologies designed to improve agriculture can be used to their full potential, in addition to partnerships with startups linked to agribusiness.

"We invest US$4 million per day worldwide in Research and Development, in line with John Deere's participation in ILPF (Integração Crop-Livestock-Forest), one of the most efficient tools that Brazil has, to meet the objectives signed at COP21", says Paulo Herrmann, president of John Deere Brazil, who currently also presides over the Rede ILPF Association. Integration is an agricultural production strategy that encompasses different production, agricultural, livestock and forestry systems, developed to overcome problems such as erosion, loss of soil fertility, silting of water courses, soil and water pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases. In 12 years, the results obtained have already exceeded the ABC Plan targets established by Brazil in the Paris Agreement (COP-21): the country reached 11.5 million hectares in ILPF, that is, 2.5 million hectares above the agreed level, which was 9 million/ha.

With a business model based on providing Intelligent Solutions, the company works to be less and less iron and more intelligence. In this trend, in addition to the innovations already mentioned, John Deere works with advanced technologies for Precision Agriculture (AP), bringing efficient property management to the farmer, improving their productivity, income and preserving the environment - AP contributes to optimization of input application, reduction of fuel consumption, better use of land, with increased productivity without the need to increase cultivable area. The importance of technology for John Deere translates into the construction of a space that integrates production systems and seeks differentiated solutions, the Precision and Innovation Agriculture Center, in Campinas (SP), opened in 2016.

Adama, a global company in the agrochemicals sector, operates broadly in the market, making continuous investments in research and development in the areas of technology and innovation. "One of the most significant results of this investment is Adama Wings, a technology based on capturing images by unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to identify planting failures, competition weeds and exposed soil", says Roberson Marczak, innovation manager at Adama in Brazil. With algorithms developed by company professionals in Israel and brought to Brazil to offer practicality and solutions for the farmer's daily life, the solution aims at the rational and assertive use of the agricultural pesticide to be applied, minimizing impacts on the environment.

The images are processed to measure the size of the affected areas and generate reports that allow the optimization of the plant's productivity through quick and accurate monitoring of the planted area. In addition to providing producers with a new perspective on their plantations, the service also represents benefits for the environment, as it optimizes the use of pesticides in planting areas.