Three Digital Agriculture Solutions Making a Difference in Brazil
As we enter 2020 and a new decade there’s a strong desire for technologies to become increasingly autonomous. And with that, we anticipate greater use of big data, machine learning, IoT, and robotization. We are essentially in an era where everything is linked together, and in agriculture it is no different, as we transform what was done manually into digital and precise solutions.
The new green agro revolution, also called Agriculture 4.0, aims to allocate all information from the field remotely, leading the producer’s desire to have even more control of his property. Among the digital services available in Brazilian agriculture, I’d like to review three solutions from Brazilian agtech startups that I’m familiar with working on a farm in Mato Grasso: Strider, Farmbox, and iCrop. These management and control solutions, each with its own features, deliver the same objective — to organize data and improve the yield for the producer.
Strider
Pest monitoring in Strider.
Strider is an agtech solution focused on pest and disease monitoring services using georeferenced big data, allowing controlled phytosanitary management according to the level of infestation. In addition, it allows you to create application recommendations, which over time organizes a database of applications on the farm for each area of the property.
Innovations in the platform are not limited to monitoring and recommendations. Strider also offers NDVI images from FarmShots and the creation of Shapefile (.shp) files for applications located quickly and intuitively. Another Strider tool available to the producer is Base and the Tracker, where the first allows inventory control and harvest costs, and the second enables the monitoring of machines and implements in real time on the farm.
In late 2018, Strider was acquired by the multinational Syngenta, further expanding its platform development project.
Farmbox
Field details in Farmbox.
Farmbox is a solution that has been growing in use in the Brazilian agricultural market as it helps to provide information to growers in a single tool. It has an application for iOS or Android, allowing the producer to select which device he would like to use. This tool offers two main features: monitoring and management.
The monitoring is carried out by the technician, where he performs the sampling in different points of the plot, all georeferenced and with levels for each type of infestation, weed, disease, or pest. It also allows you to enter pluviometry through meters allocated on the farm. As soon as the internet connection is obtained, the technician performs the synchronization and will be available to the producer.
The second part is the management of the farm including inventory and costs, all interconnected and directly linked to each activity. For example, when carrying out an application planning, the tool itself shows how much inventory is available and the cost that such application will have.
It is possible to program an entire agricultural plan, from sowing to harvest, as well as pesticide applications. Information such as operating cost, cost per application, and yield after harvest is demonstrated at the end of the harvest to the producer.
iCrop
iCrop is an agtech platform focused on irrigation management from Pivot, monitoring the use of water in the field and the energy cost of irrigation in agricultural production.
It works as follows: after the registration of the areas, identification of soil type, soil moisture, cultivars, cycle of days, and technical information such as crop evapotranspiration coefficients, all irrigation or rain that occurs in the pivot, is inserted in the platform, so that there is a forecast of how much should be irrigated next time in a sustainable way, saving on irrigation or avoiding a water deficit.
At the end, a report on the energy cost of irrigation is prepared for the producer to account for its general cost.
In addition, iCrop brings with it meteorological stations that carry out rain forecasts through numerous mathematical formulas for the region. These stations are via satellite, eliminating the need for an internet connection.
It is interesting to point out that digital agriculture platforms such as these seek greater integration. Because until a platform meets all of the demands of the field, there will be a need for more than one solution on the farm. Thus the greater integration an agtech solution has, the better it will be for the rural producer.
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