Management tool contributes to controlling cotton production and sales

Brazil is the fifth largest cotton producer in the world and second in the ranking of largest global cotton exporters. Last year, according to a Conab survey, 2,7 million tons were produced on Brazilian soil, generating revenue of US$ 2,6 billion for the country. Even with great economic importance, cotton production is an activity that faces major challenges .

The main ones are: competition with the market for synthetic fibers, such as polyester, in textile production and also the high costs of production in the field, such as the use of pesticides, heavy machinery and transport to ports. Added to this, the domestic market has received many clothes produced outside the country each year, mainly from China.

To overcome all these problems, many producers have turned to technology to be increasingly precise and efficient in all their processes. This has also been the case at Grupo Nativa Farms. Based in Primavera do Leste, a municipality with just over 62 thousand inhabitants in the south of Mato Grosso, the group currently has a planted area of ​​more than 120 thousand hectares.

With the cultivation of soybeans and corn, it is in cotton cultivation that they stand out, being one of the pioneers in Mato Grosso with this variety. According to Fabio Romeu Froelich, administrator and responsible for the technological innovation and costs area of ​​Grupo Nativa, in recent years the planted areas have expanded significantly and so they have had to resort to tools and technologies to maintain control of the business. “In the past, our management system was entirely spreadsheet-based, from the payroll to the invoice. With the increase in the group’s productivity, this old tool became limited”, he highlights.

To make decisions more effective and assertive, the group restructured management and started using GAtec tools and solutions - agtech specialized in developing tools for agro-industrial management. “With GAtec modules it is possible to know why there was a loss in production. Being able to reach this level of control is really good. The production part, for example, is done 100% in the system. In a field, everything is very dynamic, you need to have more accurate control and information in the palm of your hand, to act assertively, with faster and more dynamic correction”, says the producer.

Currently, the farms have GAtec processing, maintenance and agricultural modules implemented. In this way, there is secure integration of all information, including: supply, planning, documentation and opening a service order, among others. “The data is currently much more assertive, there has also been an improvement in the flow of information as the change is striking”, points out Froelich.  

Among the tools used in management, the producer also highlights the harvest module, which makes it possible to control production, weighing/classification, costs, planting, treatments, harvesting, pests, maps, third parties, rural areas, machines and equipment and irrigation. “We noticed that with this system, our team in the field embraced the idea and with the result we have it is really worth it”, he says.

From harvest planning to cost

Another benefit also observed with the use of integrated agro-industrial management software is the end-to-end view, from planning activities to calculating agricultural production costs. According to Leandro Sarto, commercial director at GAtec, everything is now planned and controlled through the tool, enabling rural producers, such as Froelich, the reliability and traceability of information. “With the use of the system, the producer now has greater predictability of scenarios through the planning modules, which have become operational goals and will serve as the basis for the entire chain of operations that will be carried out and indicated on the same platform, in the most diverse areas, such as agriculture, livestock, maintenance, industrial or marketing”, he mentions.

According to the director of GAtec, in this way the system becomes a “collaborator” of the team. In other words, it determines all the costs involved and identified in the production process, generates indicators of operational efficiencies and identifies, through dynamic crossing of information and management panels, points of optimization in the use of resources (inputs, pesticides, people, machines, trucks, fuels, productive areas, among others). 

Thus, it provides operational improvements to producers. “Agribusiness is an essentially commoditized segment, it is not the producer who sets the price for his product, but the global market. Therefore, we need to aim to improve management, increasing efficiencies and operational yields and reducing costs, so that profitability is greater”, says Sarto.

With the harvest and agronomic monitoring modules, for example, the producer has the ease of having full control of agricultural management, that is, everything related to technical control, service orders and crop production. With the tool it is possible to know the products and inputs used in the crops, who carried out the operations and with which machine and everything related to agricultural operations and field monitoring.

According to Sarto, these processes mentioned above are an important basis for generating cost information. “For everything that is being produced and applied in the field, work orders are made. Once these notes are captured in the field, the information flows naturally within the GAtec platform to determine the production cost so that the client can later make the most assertive decisions”, highlights the director.

Sales made easy

Buying, selling and negotiating agricultural commodities in general has never been an easy task. Excessive complexity, slowness, unpredictability, lack of reliability, for years this was the reality that rural producers and trading companies faced when controlling their commercial activities. In cotton farming this is even a little more complex.

Due to the characteristics of this crop, the tool used needs to be able to control operations based on the individual characteristics of the feather bales, which form commercial batches with their specific weight, quality and pricing. All this complexity requires strict controls, as it is a select market and very much based on trust and data security, bringing transparency to the buyer.

To help with this arduous task, the group turned to another tool, Commerce, a platform also made available by GAtec. The system is complete and innovative in managing the purchase and sale of agricultural commodities and helps the producer to control all processes involved in marketing, giving access to simple, intuitive, fast and assertive indicators.

According to the producer, Grupo Nativa has evolved a lot since implementing Commerce, mainly helping them with quality, as the product is very careful. “Before we used this tool it was very complex, now having this production control and sales everything in one place was an absurd leap in quality”, says Froelich.   

In addition to cotton cultivation, Commerce is available for several segments within agribusiness, including: corn, soybeans, sugar, citrus and livestock. “This platform helps control all the processes involved in commodity trading, as almost no system of its kind can do”, explains GAtec’s director of commodity trading, Leonardo Ramos.

The platform began to be developed in 2007 and since then the tool has been improved to become a complete solution. It stands out in: the easy integration of the process of buying and selling agricultural commodities in the domestic and foreign markets, as the tool follows all international standards. In addition, it provides full traceability of operations, ensuring the quality and information of each product, from origin to destination.