*By Clayton Montarroyos
Brazil is recognized worldwide as an important player in the agribusiness sector. The country leads the world export of corn; is the largest producer of sweet orange in the world and a leader in orange juice exports; is the world's second largest producer of soybeans and beef.
The list of agricultural crops in which Brazilian producers stand out is much broader, but what I want to draw attention to is the economic relevance of Agribusiness for the growth of Brazilian GDP and the importance of introducing the 4.0 concept in the sector, with the adoption of disruptive technologies such as drones, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and the internet of things, generating much more data in real time.
A study conducted through a partnership between Embrapa , Sebrae and the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) revealed that 84% of Brazilian farmers already use at least one digital technology as a support tool in agricultural production and that an increasing number of producers are eager to learn more about new technologies. They want to learn how to use them to conquer new markets, reduce costs, reduce impacts on the environment, reduce waste and add sustainability.
If some technological resources are still far from producers, Business Intelligence (BI) tools and methodologies are already available to them to help management in decision making at both the operational and strategic level, creating conditions to improve planning, understand impacts of the conjuncture and even predict trends that affect business results.
I can cite as an example a successful case of Santa Clara Cooperative , headquartered in Carlos Barbosa (RS), whose data journey started in 2014 and has since evolved in all its business units, for example, to monitor the quality of milk and all parameters analyzed daily; to monitor the industrial process and logistics in the dairy chain.
Santa Clara promoted a data literacy process, that is, it brought knowledge in data analysis to its team and, today, it does not imagine the management of the cooperative without the indicators that the BI system provides to different sectors, among them production, financial and commercial.
Agribusiness deals with perishable products, is affected by climate change in Brazil and in other regions of the planet, just to mention two critical factors. Thus, these volatile characteristics make data essential in all stages, from planning to the flow of production with a focus on the domestic and export markets, remembering that this cycle is repeated periodically.
Producers already have a wide range of internal and external data to analyze and initiate a data literacy process with their employees in order to pave the way for the implementation of disruptive technologies to return more quickly.
Business intelligence based on BI tools should be used as a fundamental solution for analyzing data and providing necessary information to decision makers at all levels in the agribusiness chain.
The application of BI tools and methodologies, however, is still not satisfactory when it comes to small and medium producers, although there is great potential, which needs to be stimulated to guarantee the profitability, sustainability and competitiveness of the sector as a whole. and each company that operates in it. There is no time to lose to create an agribusiness data driven in Brazil.
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