RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to Celso Luiz Moretti, president of the state-owned Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), “there is no doubt” that Brazil’s food production will double in the next decade. Moretti believes that with technology and sustainability, production growth is linked to the growth of agritechs in the country, which work to increase sustainable production.
The importance of agritechs was discussed during the “Agritech focused on best practices” panel at the “Super Agro Brazil 2021” forum. The event, organized by EXAME on Thursday, April 8, gathered sector specialists to debate the future of agribusiness in Brazil.
“Brazil went from being a net food importer to one of the biggest global players in production over the last five decades, because it invested heavily in science, technology, and innovation. Brazilian agriculture is science-driven,” assesses Moretti, who points out that Brazil exports to more than 160 countries around the world and that, in five years, “we will become the largest exporter of commodities” and surpass the United States in grain exports.
Besides Moretti, Márcia M. Amaral, Open Innovation Manager at LEAP/KPMG and Co-Founder of ALLUAGRO, an agritech startup that works with agricultural machinery’s geolocation and implements, also participated.
“We are now in a process where traditional companies are teaming up with startups to create agricultural transformation processes,” assesses Marcia Amaral. She notes a synergy between farmers and agrotech, which should “impact even more” in the next decade and make Brazil an intelligence exporter.
“Companies and startups need to unite value propositions so that together they create an agricultural technological intelligence for export to the world. We have the potential to dominate this area,” says the executive.
Growth focused on sustainability
“We will sustainably increase production in Brazil,” Moretti analyzes. He says that the country has around 60 million hectares of degraded pastures that, with technology, could be used in the next decade to produce approximately 260 million tons of grains, an amount that was produced with 68 million hectares of land.
“I’m not talking about opening new areas or cutting down a single tree, but rather bringing 60 million hectares of degraded pastureland into the Brazilian productive matrix. We are going to grow a lot, the production in Brazil. We are going to become the largest food producer in the world sustainably, and the indicators are there.”
When talking about what agrotech is doing today, Amaral makes it clear that the whole process counts on startups that are already trying to impact the production chain. They work in soil analysis, planting and harvest intelligence processes, climate analysis, logistics efficiency, leaf analysis, and some can even make it rain through chemical processes with airplanes.
Going beyond sustainability, Amaral also comments that she sees many companies understanding the importance of agriculture data. She exemplifies the use of drones to analyze soil quality, planting failures, pest predictability, or organo-mineral distribution, and Moretti adds: “This is already happening in cotton farms in Mato Grosso, for example. Through drones, it is possible to map a certain disease, and the sprayer will hit only those plants where the disease exists.”
“I also see platforms that do crop risk management through satellites, or livestock and irrigation management,” continues Amaral, who says that irrigation management is essential when we talk about being able to plant anywhere on the planet.
In Brazil, for example, there are 300,000 hectares of wheat in the Cerrado (savannah) region, thanks to a genetic improvement effort carried out by Embrapa and partners. Normally, wheat thrives in a cold climate and grows in temperate, not tropical countries, such as Canada.
“For us to consume good quality bread, someone needs to produce a wheat that is adapted to a certain region, that is adapted to the soil, and that resists pests and diseases so we can use fewer pesticides,” says Moretti.
“Brazilian agro is the most innovative sector of our economy by far. The amount of technology and knowledge you have in a grain of corn or an apple is greater than in the smartphone in your hand,” he adds.
Source: Exame