Agrobit, Agrotools and GHT drive the democratization of smart agriculture for Latin American producers
Agriculture is essential for human beings. It is the source of livelihood and contributes to the food security and health of all nations. Therefore, due to population growth, the world will need to increase food production by 50% to 70% by 2050, according to the United Nations
The 28% of the planet's surface suitable for cultivation is in Latin America, and there are significant challenges such as rural connectivity, water use, rising greenhouse gases and ultimately the impact of climate change, already leading to a reduction of at least 21% in global food production.
With 576 million hectares of arable land, Latin America contributes 14% of world agricultural production and 23% of agricultural exports. In addition, there are about 15 million farmers.
For Herbert Lewy, General Manager of Smart Agriculture and Bioeconomy for Microsoft in Latin America, today this region has the opportunity to sustainably feed the world, increasing production and gaining efficiency especially with data-driven agriculture: “Digital native companies such as Agrobit, Agrotools and GHT are driving the democratization of smart agriculture for all Latin American producers.”
Solutions to improve agriculture
Technology has played an essential role in boosting agriculture and transforming it into agribusiness, orgtech, that starts with improving the planting, harvesting and distribution processes, through digitalization, relying on artificial intelligence (AI) to predict future product orders, to the development of solutions to manage risks.
Latin America concentrates important examples of how digital native companies promote agriculture through innovative solutions that increase the capabilities of this industry.
In Brazil, the agrotools was born from the vision of advancing agriculture through geotechnology and data intelligence. Aimed at industries that purchase raw materials for agriculture, livestock, input industry, financial institutions such as banks and credit unions for agriculture, among others, the company has a complete ecosystem of applications, tools, APIs (Application Programming Interface), dashboards and other turnkey solutions that allow these companies to do things faster, better manage risk, and meet regulatory concerns.
“We are a multicloud company, with Microsoft-based infrastructure, we take advantage of Planetary Computer for our solutions and we work side by side with the Microsoft Research team to develop new products”, says Lucas Tuffi, director of strategy at Agrotools.
The benefits offered by its solutions are varied. Such as, for example, reducing the time a bank takes to evaluate a guarantee that could be a farm. Previously, it was necessary to send a person to receive the information in person and then validate it. This process can sometimes take up to a month and, thanks to a product developed by Agrotools, this evaluation is now done in minutes, remotely, which provides more agility and costs 10 times less than a face-to-face evaluation.
With regard to risk management, Agrotools has solutions that allow companies to instantly monitor and assess where the raw material they acquire comes from, whether from a slaughterhouse or a commodity trading company, and know whether the product originates in a specific region. critical to the company's overall policy. “All companies, regardless of their sector, have risks when operating in agricultural businesses, these risks can be social, environmental, moral, climatic, biological. We help them keep track of all these risks,” says Tuffi.
For regulatory compliance, Agrotools created an algorithm that uses AI, and allows a credit union to instantly generate geodetic coordinates of a farm and monitor the entire development of its crop, which are sent to a Central Bank for approval of a loan to a farmer. This process, which is a mandatory regulation, was previously done by hand, where an analyst drew and collected all the coordinates and then sent them to the Central Bank.
information collection
Agrotools has changed the way companies work through its solutions. With GIX, a mobile application, they offer their customers, whether financial institutions, animal nutrition companies or raw material suppliers, an easy process for collecting information from farms. This information was previously collected on notebooks and with cameras, now, thanks to GIX, they can collect evidence and improve their analysis remotely, even if they don't have an internet connection.
But they also have the flexibility to adapt their solutions to companies of different sizes. “When we talk about our solutions, we think of them as a set of building blocks,” says Tuffi. Larger customers can purchase the complete set, which will help them achieve their goals. But medium or small companies can buy one or two blocks, just the ones they need to meet specific needs.
for tuffi, “innovation comes from scenarios that, for the most part, have chaos”. He has the vision that, when there are many challenges, such as lack of connectivity and little data or information available, it is necessary to let innovation enter the business, so that it changes all processes.
Quality flowers from Colombia to the world
According to data from statist, Colombia is the second largest exporter of flowers in the world, behind the Netherlands and above Ecuador, and GHT, a Colombian company that groups 50 floriculture companies under its name, is one of the biggest players in this sector. In a year, they can send a billion flowers and their flowers are present in some of the largest retail chains in the United States.
To maintain this level of consistency and quality, and ensure that the product arrives on time and well presented to customers, technology is required. “When you have 50 companies in the same cluster that compete and collaborate with each other, you must have your supply chain synchronized, maintain a certain quality, have good delivery times, and this without technology would be impossible to achieve”, says Luis Suárez , Vice President of Business Services and Transformation at GHT.
For 15 years, GHT has worked closely with Microsoft and used its technology to develop a system that integrates its supply chain. According to Suarez, they tried different solutions from Visual Studio, .NET, RPA tools, Power Apps and more. “We are pioneers in Business Intelligence, this product has become the oracle of the organization, we call it the Unique Truth”, says Suárez, about the business intelligence suite where all your information, reports and data from all the farms are centralized and that, in order to he is a strong example of how to democratize technology in an organization and allow it to move to the next level.
But before having the One Truth, everything was done manually, with pencil and paper. “The hardest part was trying to convince people to put down their pen and paper and use the data they saw on their computer screen,” says Luisa Ortega, responsible for quality and post-cut processes at GHT.
Thanks to the implementation of technology, GHT provides complete traceability of all its processes and is now able to know what is planted on each farm, find out if there are pests and diseases in the greenhouses and even estimate how much will be produced. They have full visibility of the production, post-harvest and sales processes. In addition, they were able to significantly reduce the percentage of unused flowers that ended up as fertilizer. Before, this percentage was at 8%, now, thanks to the implementation of technology, they represent only 1%.
“We sell sensations, feelings, so knowing which flower colors we have in production is of vital importance for the commercial department”, says Ortega. For him, it has been of great help to use a technology that allows controlling that only what they have approved is planted and in previously defined proportions.
But the technology has not only benefited GHT, it has also benefited the end customer. According to Suárez, the technology has increased the useful life of the vase, the time that the cut flower retains its decorative qualities and ends when clear signs of aging appear. “When a person buys roses, they last at least ten days as if they were new. With technology, we managed to increase production forecasts and have flowers almost instantly, gaining three or four more days of life in the vase”, says Suárez.
At GHT they know the importance of innovation for business continuity. Within the company, they have implementation teams to develop easy-to-manage applications. The company has an area dedicated specifically to low code, which visits the farms and trains them in RPA systems (robotic process automation), Power Apps, Power BI and others, which have allowed the development of solutions, including for the same people from the farms. These low-code solutions are implemented in Web Flowers, the core GHT package.
GHT's digital transformation was a process that started from the inside out, they started to standardize their processes through technology and thanks to their developments, their flowers look longer lasting in their customers' vases.
The digital transformation of the Argentine countryside
Agrobit is an Argentine technology company that started with agricultural software 40 years ago and, in 2019, used AI and machine learning to create the country's first smart farming system. Agrobit worked with Microsoft to develop a customizable, cloud-based platform and then accelerate its certification and go-to-market to get it to farmers and winegrowers faster.
Argentina is an agricultural power, considered a of the world's leading food suppliers, specializing in wine, beef, soy, among other crops. Therefore, the country's winegrowers and farmers have a great influence on global food production.
Agrobit worked with Microsoft to build a customizable platform based on Azure, then accelerate its certification and go-to-market to get it to farmers and winemakers faster. Microsoft already had experience in the sector through its projects FarmBeats and FarmVibes, which use data from sensors, drones, satellites, connected tractors and other farm equipment to feed artificial intelligence tools and algorithms that turn data into intelligence.
Agrobit's first AI-enabled platform focused on soybeans, corn and wheat, and has expanded to help manage another 50 different crops, including lemons, tomatoes and avocados, all grown on nearly 7 million acres of its customers' farms. . “The system is constantly being improved, helping producers to obtain greater production and reducing inputs such as seeds, water and fertilizers, placing precise amounts in precise places to create a more sustainable model of food production”, says Horacio Balussi, CIO and founder of Agrobit.
With Agrobit's platform, farmers can run different scenarios for dry or wet years and add changes in government regulations, market valuations and exchange rates, combining all the specific crop and harvest requirements for each type of crop and thus , quickly come up with complete plans and budgets to help with decision-making, says José Avalis, technologist at Agrobit.
The system can even suggest a different type of crop that might work better for a given season based on all these parameters. And the apps work on connected computers in the office as well as offline devices in the field. “Agrobit customers see overall cost savings of up to 30% when they implement system recommendations,” says Avalis.
Through sensors, satellites and algorithms, under the tutelage of agronomists, data scientists and software developers, systems like Agrobit's monitor air and soil conditions and forecasts for the field and send alerts to farmers about when the best time to plant, water, fertilize, weed and harvest a specific crop.
At each step of the satellite, the system monitors plant growth and suggests actions. And machine learning helps the system continually learn best practices for each region and improve each season to help farmers increase quality, efficiency and cost savings. This helps growers keep track remotely, giving them the ability to farm larger areas and freeing up time for other activities.
Technology democratizes access to information, solutions and platforms that help improve agriculture's internal and external processes, to make it more efficient, profitable and environmentally sustainable. At Microsoft, we are committed to continuing to drive the agriculture industry forward through our solutions, to help our customers develop solutions that continue to enable digital transformation in an industry so critical to people's development.
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