Sao Paulo – At least once a year, a flying object used to call the attention of the 130 employees of the estate Três Lagoas, in Paulista, in São Paulo. This is an drone , unmanned aircraft that flies over stretches of the 5,000 hectares of sugar cane plantations of the property
The goal is to find planting failures:. Areas where the crop is compromised by seedlings that no revenge or contaminated by pests. The drone discovers this through cameras equipped with infrared sensors
Low rates indicate that the walking cane may be damaged or simply no longer exists. – These regions appear colored in property maps made with the help of drones. Monitoring is done on the Three Ponds three years ago
First, find defects in farming was an eternal “guesses”:. Employees would walk to a planting section and the flaws found there were taken as reality whole production. “It was common waste pesticides in healthy plants and find unproductive areas only at harvest time,” says Jorge Morelli, owner of Três Lagoas.
“Now we know every inch of where the problems are.” From there Since then, farm workers-turns in the manual planting of areas failed. Where there are pests, they put cardboard cards up to 100,000 eggs of wasps reared in the laboratory. They, when they reach adulthood, they eat predators
The use of technology has halved the areas with income below expectations. – Now standing at 5% of the crop, a level comparable to the best sugarcane country . “We fail to lose cane in the middle of the season,” said Morelli. Better management, as occurred on the farm Três Lagoas, increased productivity of Brazilian agribusiness. – And the importance of the sector to the economy
In 2015, the wealth coming from farms is expected to reach 1.2 trillion reais – about 20% of GDP. In severe times of crisis, the sector is the one to bring good news: Central Bank’s forecast is for growth of 2% in agribusiness, while the industry to fall 5%, and services, 2%. How to ensure that the pace of achievements in the field will continue in the future?
And how to reconcile the strength in crops to the preservation of environment ? These issues were discussed in the first EXAMINATION Agribusiness Forum, held on October 26 in Sao Paulo
The meeting André Nassar, Agricultural Policy secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture.; biologist Fernando Reinach, a partner at Pitanga background, facing innovative businesses; Roger Ingold, chairman of Accenture; and Sergio Rial, president of Santander bank’s board of directors.
They also discussed the future of agribusiness entrepreneurs and industry business executives, as José Carlos Carramate, director of Precision Planting, a biotechnology company division Monsanto; Paul Herrmann, president of John Deere automaker; Marcelo Castelli, president of Fibria pulp mill; Roberto Waack, president of Amata, now the forestry sector; and Gustavo Junqueira, president of the Brazilian Rural Society
The conclusion:. investments in technology may lead to more agribusiness excellence stories in the future. The good news is emerging in startups country facing the farms needs – like big data system providers to measure crop productivity software to control levels of fertilizers, chips to monitor the feeding of livestock, and so on.
In EXAMINATION Forum Agribusiness five entrepreneurs made a round of business presentation. Among them Giovani Amianti engineer, the XMobots drones maker, and Entomologist Alexandre Pinto, the Bug Biological Controls, responsible for the drones and the wasps that gave good results on the farm Três Lagoas (know the stories of the five companies on p. 44 and 45).
Looking at the last four decades, agribusiness has a lot to celebrate. Investments in fertilizer corrected soil acidity in the cerrado, opening up new agricultural frontiers. Genetic improvements in seeds and the introduction of good management practices have increased yields. In 2015, the National Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock expects a record harvest of 202 million tons of grain.
The volume is more than four times what was obtained in the mid 70. In the period, acreage doubled. Each hectare currently leave 3 tons of grain. In 1977, it was only 1 tonne.
That is, tripled productivity. The result is that the country achieved food security and has become a leading exporter: Brazil is leading world in the sugar trade, coffee, orange and beef and poultry. Over the past decade, the positive balance of the agribusiness trade balance doubled:. In 2015 is expected to exceed 90 billion dollars
Although the price of raw materials such as soybeans and corn have fallen this year, almost half revenue from foreign trade should come from items such as grains and meats. “The volume exported by the agribusiness chain is expected to grow 15% this year,” said André Nassar, the Ministry of Agriculture.
The future is also promising because the world will need a great increase in production food. According to projections of the United Nations, the planet’s population will go from the current 7 billion to nearly 10 billion by 2050.
Most mouths the most will be in Africa and Asia, and both regions are expected to contribute 90% of the increase in average world class in the coming decades. The result can be an increase of 70% in the consumption of food. – Something like 900 million tons
“The more the world richer, more needs protein,” said Sergio Rial, who took board Santander this year after stints in agribusiness companies like Cargill and Marfrig
In the future demand, there is a liability to be solved:. although the global production of food has nearly doubled since 1970, the amount by person dropped 5%, according to the International Institute for Research on Food Policies, which publishes the Global Hunger Index. “Brazil is one of the best prepared countries to solve the problem,” said Rial.
In fact, few regions of the world have as good light, water and heat, indispensable resource for photosynthesis. The biological process is directly related to the abundance and quality of a crop.
Indirectly, the supply of plant feed also influences the weight gain of cattle, poultry and swine. “Of the world’s great agricultural frontiers, only sub-Saharan Africa rivals Brazil in the abundance of natural resources,” said Fernando Reinach.
Two paths
The question is how Brazil should meet the call of the planet to feed future generations. There are two choices. The first would open new plantations advancing on native vegetation, such as the Amazon. The other, and better, is to increase production of the areas already used for agriculture with the spread of modern management practices.
“This is the likely option,” says Reinach. . “The agricultural technology is the best friend of preserving” The challenges ahead are to convince the majority of farmers about the urgent need to adopt technologies in crops – today still restricted to the industry’s elite – and win the support of environmentalists, showing them that this is the best way to avoid the felling of more forests.
“There is a tension between farmers and environmentalists, but the approval of the Forest Code showed that it is possible to advance a common agenda,” says Marcelo Castelli, President Fibria. A step in this direction was taken in December last year with the founding of Brazil Climate Coalition, Forestry and Agriculture, a movement that brings together 104 companies, NGOs and industry associations.
The purpose is to reach an agriculture with low carbon emissions, substance responsible for global warming . In June, the group released a document with suggestions for the Brazilian government to present at COP-21, the world conference on climate change to be held in Paris in December.
Among the proposals are training to recover pastures worn with technology and modern management practices. According to the Coalition in Brazil alone there is potential to reconcile a reduction of 50% in carbon emissions by 2030 and an increase of 30% in the production of the field.
“Soon, agricultural productivity gains and conservation Environmental run together, “said Roberto Waack, president of Amata company and member of the Coalition. Until then, according to experts gathered at EXAMINATION Forum Agribusiness, an effort needs to be done to bring technologies to most farms where productivity is low.
Each rural workers in Brazil generates an average of $ 6,000 in income a year, a tenth of what Americans produce, according to a study by the Getulio Vargas Foundation. “Because of the low level of education and high staff turnover in Brazil no one takes more than 70% of the machines can produce,” says Paul Herrmann, John Deere.
Another cited problem for it is the inadequacy of labor laws. “We have a ‘atrapalhista’ legislation,” said Hermann. “The working day of concept in the field is different, but the applicable law is the same as it is for those who work in the city.”
The particularities of the local culture – as opposed to temperate climates, such as the US, where producers reap an annual crop in Brazil climatic conditions allow up to three plantations in the same period. – require logistics and more complex financial arrangements than in the United States so that this advantage is fully enjoyed
” Investing in farm management is the first step to give a productivity leap, “says José Carramate, Monsanto. Natural resources and technology Brazil already has to build the agriculture of the future, more efficient and sustainable.
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