Esalq has a meeting with John Deere representatives

On August 16, the Luiz de Queiroz Higher School of Agriculture (Esalq/USP) received representatives from the company John Deere. The meeting begins work on a recently signed agreement that provides for cooperation in digital technology and agricultural machinery and also involves the Terra Verde dealership, a John Deere representative in Piracicaba.

At Esalq, the group was welcomed by the director, Professor Thais Vieira, and the vice-director, Professor Marcos Milan, as well as other representatives of the School's current management.

The agreement between Esalq, John Deere and Terra Verde provides for the installation of a training center at Fazenda Areão, one of Esalq's experimental stations.

Rodrigo Bonato, John Deere's marketing director for Latin America and former student of Esalq, highlighted that the agreement will allow for the exploration of all the innovation involving the machines. “The involvement of the technical staff at John Deere, Terra Verde and the people at Esalq will enable us to advance even further in precision agriculture, in terms of data analysis, computer vision, in short, in all the new technologies that agriculture brings. And students will also be able to have access to this new technology that transcends simply the use of machines. This agreement is quite broad and we imagine it to be the first step in this joint work, which involves the private sector and academia”.

According to Eduardo Cunali, CEO of Terra Verde, the agreement between brings a great responsibility to his team. “Our great responsibility, as the region's concessionaire, is to make sure that this training center comes to life, that it really works on a day-to-day basis and that we reap the best possible results. There we will train our network employees, with Esalq’s full involvement contributing to research and development.”

For the deputy director of Esalq, Marcos Milan, this rapprochement between the University and companies is a global trend, strengthening the link between teaching, research and extension with the productive sector, bringing mutual benefits to the parties involved and to society . “The meeting was an opportunity to present and discuss the areas of activity of the agreement. Esalq, the presidents of Commissions, Institutional Relations, the Innovation area, engineers from the Experimental Stations Service and the Board were present”.