Global Courant 2023-05-11 18:24:25
According to a survey carried out by the IDB last year, innovation in agricultural production involves the digitalization of information and the interpretation of that same information. The work indicates that 70% of the enterprises surveyed affirm that they make decisions based on software designed to collect, store and analyze data in the agricultural business. The field and technology are merging every day. This is the topic that will be discussed today by the table “Agro digital: The future is today”, organized by Clarín.
Technological advances in the sector was the focus of the panel made up of: Federico Mayer, CEO and founder of Club AgTech; Nicolás Loria, LATAM user experience and innovation leader at Corteva; Florencia Bedacarratz, marketing manager for the Southern Cone at FMC; Marcelo Testa, contractor and president of Agrícola Testa; Yesica Chazarreta, research professor at UNNOBA and CONICET scholarship holder (INTA Pergamino); and the director of technology and product (CPO and CTO) at Nera, Rodrigo Ponce.
“Digital Agro: the future is today” is the third talk of the cycle “The world to come”, 10 meetings between company managers, officials, social leaders, experts and entrepreneurs, led by Clarín journalists on the challenges they face companies in the country today. The cycle has the main support of Telecom, OSDE and DESA, in addition to the sponsorship of Afarte and Pan American Energy and the support of Nera, FMC and Corteva.
The panel will be broadcast this Thursday at 7:00 p.m. streaming on the Clarín.com page. The contents will be shared simultaneously on social networks and later on the website and in the printed edition of the newspaper.
In the report “The revolution of agriculture 4.0” AgTech Apps presented the trends that are guiding the digitization of agriculture in the world, with a focus on Latin America. The results raise the importance of innovation in rural areas, in a scenario where climate change and overpopulation begin to make people talk. They are trends: robotics and intelligent digitization; urban agriculture and vertical harvesting; tech solutions to strengthen the product-experience synergy; biotechnology and new forms of cultivation; and digitized information and interpretable data.
The same report highlights the importance of sustainability and a marked role of digitization. It is the technology applied in the day to day of the agricultural activity to improve the decisions when producing. Among the projections for this year is digitization at the service of traceability, precision agriculture and the interpretation of information instantly.
A persistent problem is the gap that still exists in internet access between the countryside and the city. According to figures from ITU (2021), a global view refers to the fact that while urban connectivity is 76%, in the rural sector only 39%. And while in Europe the gap is 7% (87% urban connectivity and 80% rural connectivity) in America the gap grows to 23% (83% urban connectivity and barely 60% rural connectivity).
Poor connectivity is a problem that threatens the digitization of agriculture. According to data published in the report “Connectivity and Communication in Rural Areas of Argentina (INTA, 2021) more than 40% of the surveyed places do not have an Internet connection. This percentage doubles if those points with poor or regular connectivity service are added. 80% of those places with restricted access are linked to family farming.
The protagonists summoned by Clarín to address this problem are:
-Federico Mayer, CEO and founder of Club Agtech, is an Engineer in Agricultural Production (UCA) and a Master’s in Business Administration (Universidad Austral, Rosario). For 10 years he was the manager of a collection plant and later as a consultant at Globaltecnos. He developed immersion missions to innovation ecosystems, coordinating 14 missions of Agro entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley and Israel.
-Nicolás Loria, LATAM user experience and innovation leader at Corteva, is a public accountant and professor (UCA). He has a specialization in marketing from Torcuato Di Tella University and an Executive MBA from IAE Business School. He is an agricultural producer and has experience in the agribusiness sector. He lives in São Paulo, Brazil, where he leads the development of innovation and digital transformation of processes at Corteva.
-Florencia Bedacarratz, marketing manager for the Southern Cone at FMC, has a degree in Agricultural Administration (UB), with a Master’s in Business Administration MBA from IAE Business School. She has experience in the sector. She was on Cazanave, Renessen and Corteva.
-Marcelo Testa, is the managing partner of Agrícola Testa together with his brother, Carlos Testa, in a family project that has been going on for four generations. He is a Mechanical Technician by training and is responsible for the company, certified with Good Agricultural Practices since 2015. Member of AAPRESID in the Pergamino-Colón Regional.
-Yesica Chazarreta is a research professor at UNNOBA and has a degree in genetics. She is a CONICET doctoral fellow in the Crop Ecophysiology group at INTA Pergamino, studying for a PhD in Agricultural Sciences at the UBA Faculty of Agronomy. She investigates the physiological determinants of filling, drying, and forage quality in maize hybrids at early and late plantings.
-Rodrigo Ponce is director of technology and product (CPO and CTO) at Nera. He trained as a software engineer (UADE) and has a Master’s in Business Administration (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella). At Nera, he works as an expert in technology and digital business, and has extensive experience leading Latin American teams in startups and technology companies, such as Google and Oracle.
