Technologies and knowledge to improve production

Brazilian agriculture has shown, in recent decades, productivity gains that have impressed the world. While this potential puts the country in a prominent position on the international scenario, it increases economic, environmental and social responsibilities. In order to evolve and keep up with current demand, the country needs to increase production significantly to overcome the tendencies of:

• Apparent paradox in increasing production while reducing the workforce and restricting the expansion of cultivated area;
• Increased workload to control and monitor the production process, and requirements to provide data to track the final product.

In this sense, there is no way to do without automation and precision agriculture technologies and knowledge that improve and make the production process in the fields more efficient to significantly increase both qualitative and quantitative performance. Therefore, it is also a strategy to build knowledge and training skills that elevate technological standards of agricultural, livestock and forestry production.

Concept of automation

Farm automation can be understood as a system in which the operational processes of agricultural, livestock and/or forestry production are monitored, controlled and executed by machines and/or mechanical, electronic or computational devices, to increase the capacity of human work.

This way, automation in agricultural, livestock and forestry processes plays the role of increasing system and labor productivity; optimizing the use of time, inputs and capital; reducing production loss; increasing product quality and improving the quality of life of farm workers and chains. It borrows the term from both industrial and commercial automation, as agribusiness is integrated into a broad management, in parallel and chained links.

Segments

In addition to these industries, there are two segments that cater to agriculture: the parts segment and that of manufacturers of agricultural implements. The parts segment operates in the most diverse markets, brings and tests new technologies, but also caters to other industrial sectors, and few are specialized in agricultural sectors. It strongly depends on market demand.
The implements segment consists of about 600 manufacturers. The vast majority has developed by catering to farmers who had a large workforce with low technical skills.

These segments work with medium-scale farmers and smallholders. Few (less than 1%) have teams at their disposal with the capacity to develop a technological level of embedded electronics that is compatible with those of tractor industries. Such few are members of the Brazilian Machinery Builder's Association (ABIMAQ).

It is a sector that generates about 10 billion Reais a year, with prospects of this figure following the increase in the performance of agriculture. However, it lacks support to aggregate or develop new technologies; therefore, it is potentially vulnerable to the competitiveness of transnationals. Its competitive advantage comes from its proximity to the production sector and, for this reason, its technological base meets customers' needs very well.

At this point it is appropriate to observe that the agricultural production sector has a strong link with environmental and cultural traits – empirical and tacit knowledge–, which ensures its domains do not do without the immersion of developer teams in this environment.

Brazilian cattle farming has also experienced growth, positioning itself as a no less important sector. Automation in the livestock sector is diversified in places like the USA and the European Union, where there is dominance of technology. Robotic milking systems, automated feeding systems with nutritional balance, health identification, among others, are already on the market and available to farmers.

In Brazil, farmers may not have realized the cost-benefit of investing in the automation process, but, just like in agriculture, tropical cattle farming has its own characteristics, especially in the extent to which the activity takes place. Cattle farming uses about 70% of the area occupied by rural activities with more than 200 million heads of cattle.

In this extensive process, the challenges involved in identifying, locating and monitoring the animal are intensified due to distances.

These are also sectors that use protected environments. Although available, automation technology has not yet been absorbed by the Brazilian market. Automated greenhouses and breeding sites are not yet part of the country's reality.

It is an area that needs to be discussed, which includes the parts, service and consulting sectors. Therefore, the main challenge has market dimension and there is probably a need to adapt costs and train professionals. In this sense, poultry farming has received greater support, with parts suppliers for automation in the country.

The market for irrigation automation, for instance, is not mature enough yet. The computerization of decision-making and performance at the level of precision irrigation management is a global challenge, as a high volume of water is used in irrigation.

Embrapa had already understood this necessity and, since the beginning of the 1990s, it has been developing solutions in the field of agricultural automation.

It recently implemented a Portfolio of Research, Development and Innovation in Agricultural, Livestock and Forestry Automation Projects. It is an instrument to predict market demands and opportunities, and the need for public goods and to present technological solutions for competitiveness and sustainability of Brazilian agriculture.

History

Literature shows that the term 'automation' dates back to 3500 and 3200 BC, when man began to use the wheel. However, the concept only became familiar after the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.

It is even more recent in Brazilian agriculture. Processes started being automated in the 20th century, occupying a fundamental role in the country's agricultural development.

In recent decades, the performance of Brazilian agriculture has placed the country in a leading position in tropical agriculture and highlighted the importance of its role in the international food security scenario.

During this period, the world underwent great changes and the automation led to many transformations. Industrial and commercial automation have advanced at accelerated rates in order to remain competitive in a globalized world. The development of Brazilian agriculture occurred in parallel, but in its rural areas that were ruled by distinct technologies that were created and adapted to local needs.

Some sectors, such as agrochemicals and agricultural machinery, have been strongly influenced by automation and have, in turn, influenced the agricultural sector, predominantly the exporter one.

The role of automation in agriculture

Agriculture with an abundance of cheap labor is no longer the reality. The reduction of the rural population and the need for qualified labor force have been increasingly stressed by farmers. Keeping the next generations in the field is a big challenge. Many sectors, especially those of tropical crops and varieties such as castor beans, açaí and palm oil, do not have solutions to import. Increasing the yield of work in the field, reducing hardship at work and increasing the quality of life in agricultural activities is strategic to ensure sustainability.

In this sense, automation occupies an important position in Brazil, not only for the sake of competitiveness, but essentially for the future of food security and world bioenergy.

Precision agriculture: concept and principles

An example of successful automation is precision agriculture - a management system that takes into account the crop's spatial variability to increase economic returns and reduce environmental impact by applying tools, especially embedded electronics in agricultural machinery and geographic information systems.

According to literature, the principles of Precision Agriculture were conceived in 1929 in the USA, but the technique only reappeared and was disseminated in the 1980s, when microcomputers, sensors and terrestrial or satellite tracking systems were made available and allowed concepts, determination and spatio-temporal variability management to be diffused.

Precision agriculture has stood out mainly in the United States, but there have been many reports about the development of this technology in both research and application in countries such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, England and Germany.

In Brazil, the first research activities in the area were carried out at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, at the University of São Paulo (Esalq/USP), in 1997, where a pioneering work with corn crops resulted in Brazil's first harvest variability map, according to professor Luiz Antonio Balastreire.

There was also growth in agricultural research/extension initiatives, with the involvement of institutions such as Esalq/USP, the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), the São Paulo State University (Unesp), Embrapa, the ABC Foundation, the Agronomic Institute of Paraná (Iapar), the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), in addition to numerous private companies in the agricultural and technological sector and agricultural cooperatives, as well as farmers themselves.

Embrapa's research projects in PA

In 1998, precision agriculture activities began at Embrapa as a consequence of the elaboration of Plan 12 - Automation in Agriculture. Between 1999 and 2003, two pioneering research projects were conducted with resources from the Agricultural Technology Development Project (Prodetab) by World Bank, coordinated by Embrapa Maize & Sorghum and Embrapa Soils, focusing respectively on corn crops and soybean crops.

The first project had a partnership with agricultural equipment manufacturer AGCO Corporation and the Federal University of Viçosa's Department of Agricultural Engineering, while the second project had the support of the ABC Foundation (Castro, Paraná, Brazil) and the Esalq/USP.

In 1999, Precision Agriculture was a topic of studies carried out at Embrapa's Virtual Laboratory Abroad (Labex), with its American counterpart United States Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service (USDA/ARS), in Lincoln, Nebraska (USA) as a partner.

In 2004, Embrapa initiated the first networking project (Macroprogram 1) on the Precision Agriculture theme as a continuation of previous projects' activities.

As the theme was considered strategic for Brazil, Embrapa approved the second project in 2009, which involved 20 of the Corporation's Research Centers and more than 50 partners, such as companies, research institutions, universities and farmers.

More than 200 researchers took part in 15 experimental units spread around the Brazilian Northeast, Central-West, Southeast and South regions, with studies on 11 perennial and annual crops and about 100 Research, Development & Innovation activities.

The experimental fields involved annual cultures such as corn, soybeans, cotton, rice and wheat, perennial and semi-perennial cultures such as forestry (eucalyptus), fruit production (peach, apple, orange and vines), sugarcane and pasture.

The so-called 'phase 2' played an important role in consolidating the concepts of PA and knowledge advance by generating technologies and information that will be used as elements to the development, adaptation and testing of machines, implements and equipment.

It also contributed to breaking down barriers and expanding the potential impact of PA beyond grains and large-scale farms, as well as effectively using agronomic and environmental knowledge, which until then were more restricted to machine and embedded electronics technologies.

The transfer not only of technologies, but mainly of generated knowledge occurred in different ways, with emphasis on the publication of two books with technical-scientific studies that, in 2016, exceeded the mark of 8,000 free visits in Brazil and in more than 35 countries.

The training of multipliers was also a relevant aspect, for instance, in a series of lectures in various regions of Brazil, in partnership with the National Rural Learning Service (Senar), with the main concepts of Precision Agriculture.

New stage of the Precision Agriculture Network

New challenges lie ahead, especially to transform generated knowledge into simple technologies that can be appropriated by the production system, so that PA techniques are adopted by large-scale farmers or smallholders, thus generating important impacts on production systems.

In addition to this, there are new research opportunities in Precision Agriculture that emerge strongly with new technologies in automation with the use of drones, sensors, robots, wireless networks, digital image processing, telemetry, internet of things (IoT), Big Data, among others.

For this purpose, the third stage of the PA network, which started in 2016, is structured in five technical projects: three with scope in enabling technologies; one centered in technologies with disruptive potential; and one on so-called "future-bearing technologies", as well as management projects.

The projects on enabling technologies aim to provide technological solutions that enable the quick and effective implementation of PA in three different production systems:

1. Large-scale systems which rely on intensive use of equipment, such as cotton, sugarcane, corn, soybeans and wheat crops, where PA has spread;
2. Labor-demanding systems, such as coffee and fruit production (apples and grapes), to enable PA in search of higher efficiency;
3. Production systems still little explored by PA, such as Integrated Crop-Livestock-Forestry Systems (ICLFS) and precision livestock, that is, in systems with high economic and environmental potential.

The projects that explore themes with disruptive potential and future-bearing technologies will work transversely with the enabling technologies, with the PA as a common element.

On the other hand, the projects that organize the network operation are linked to management and innovation and responsible for articulating issues that involve the network and manage the systematization of the generated results.

The expectation is that these results can help manage property variability, thereby impacting the expansion of the use of PA, taking the Brazilian agricultural production system to a new level of sustainability. The cross-cutting technology projects will explore future-bearing themes with disruptive potential.

Research results

Some of the results that were obtained since the creation of the Network can already be indicated, in the form of technologies, products or services:

1. Agricultural Robot for massive soil and plant data collection;
2. Geofielder: software for data and image collection for tablets and smartphones;
3. Implement for distribution of limestone at the ISOBUS standard rate;
4. Software for aerial image processing: mosaic, plant count, identification of soil, crops and mulch areas, identification of diseases such as HLB, identification of nematode pests and invasive plants;
5. Dihedral sensor for water measurement available for plants;
6. Electrical conductivity measurement system adaptable to different implements and for use in perennial crops;
7. Software and wireless sensor network to precision irrigation;
8. Methodologies and equipment to determine nutritional stress of plants;
9. Equipment for early detection of HLB (Greening) in citrus;
10. Test bench for development of precision spraying;
11. Analysis of risk of invasive plant infestation in corn crops;

In September 2013, Embrapa inaugurated, in São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil, the Brazilian Laboratory of Reference in Precision Agriculture (Lanapre). The unprecedented space in Brazil is used to research and develop equipment, sensors, mechanical components and embedded electronics in a single location.

The facility has a geoinformatics computer system to process massive data that are generated in field and to produce information for management in Precision Agriculture; the development of electronic control units (ECU) and software for machines and implements from different manufacturers, which are compatible with the international ISOBUS standard, are also plans for the facility.

The experimental field of five hectares around the laboratory has small planting areas to support the development of assessment methodologies, machine function prototypes, equipment, sensors and actuators and to put RGB and hyperspectral cameras on board of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

Lanapre, built with the support of parliamentary amendments from the National Congress of Brazil, also brings a partnership model that involves two research centers: Embrapa Instrumentation (which has been dedicated to the theme for over two decades) and Embrapa Southeast Livestock (which has contributed greatly to Precision Cattle Farming), which has offered physical state to implement the laboratory in an area of Canchim Farm.

Promising future

Agricultural processes, ranging from the most traditional ones such as a harvesting to the most innovative ones such as precision agriculture, have their own characteristics and automation opportunities. Numerous aspects must be considered in order to obtain a sustainable economic, environmental and social process. Even though automation seems to act in a specialized way, agricultural automation requires a holistic and systemic approach to achieve its goal.

In the era of Internet, where social media, cloud computing, Big Data, Internet of Things, among other technologies that have dominated innovation in society, agricultural production, as a system that has spread throughout the Brazilian territory in several chains, presents itself as one of the greatest potential beneficiaries of automation.

This agricultural integration has been designed by the academy under the theme 'Farm Management Information System – FMIS'. The idea of connecting market, climate, technology information, among others, is a conceptual model, but it sheds a light on the possibilities and real demands of agricultural chains. It clarifies the role of automation and standardization at key integration points, including robotics.

When looking at the changes in society and its scenarios, Embrapa included automation in its priorities portfolio. Its role in this process can be very broad, and there are many gaps to fill.
Agriculture and its chains are very complex. Attracting industrial/commercial automation actors to work on the sector's needs and opportunities is a role that Embrapa has already been performing and that shall expand partnerships to increase innovation potential.

To assure future generations, it is necessary to reduce hardship at work in the fields. Embrapa and its partners must identify and adapt available technologies and new ones to large and medium-scale farmers and smallholders, collaborating so they can take advantage of them.