A consultant's path to agriculture 4.0.

Salto, Eastern Republic of Uruguay.

As a technical crop advisor for more than 20 years and part of a company that manages more than 15,000 hectares, I have been in constant search of linking productivity to resource efficiency. 

I learned that all decisions and actions to be taken to improve the crop must be based on a correct diagnosis of the situation for each action to be effective.

The error of our actions are a constant learning process, but almost always it has been from one harvest to the next, an "autopsy", which we are engraving in our memory as an error not to commit again because we already know the result. This makes it a slow and incompatible process in today's times.

So for years I have been looking for tools to improve the evaluation of the fields in the shortest time possible and the most technically objective. In the beginning, you needed more than anything else a physical capacity to walk the fields per day, both with mild temperatures and with more than 40° average summer temperatures. Later on, I complemented with light aircraft flights at more than 100 m of altitude with evaluations and moving photos very subjective in their interpretation that once the crop reached a certain foliage, did not contribute much.

Eventually I ventured to the use of the drone, there if I found a jump in quality especially in the tour per day and minimum physical effort. What was I doing piloting a drone every day and filling several hard disks with videos that I didn't have time to analyze objectively? It was nothing more than a good field visit without objective data.

In the middle of this path I refused to invest in equipment with greater flight independence and spectral cameras and "the sea in a car", I said to myself, I am not a drone operator or an imaging technician, I am an agronomist and I have to make decisions.

At this point I started to contact different platforms that handled satellite images, I remember 3 easily, the problem is always the same, they did not know how to fit it in agriculture, until one suggested me NDVI uses.

It was a breakthrough for me but my joy was short lived, it's nice to see a plot with shades of green with units that tell you nothing and can only be contrasted in crop vigor. What does each pixel value mean, is it good, can it be better? I was still looking for answers.

In the middle of this road comes a phenomenal diamond in the rough, which gave me crop-specific indicators almost instantly with weekly repetition and made for my crop. Satellite images at the same time analyzed, the dream of the kid. But all this is not "loose" data, they have managed to develop specific models to compare with what we get in each satellite pass. DATA WITHOUT REFERENCES IS NOT INFORMATION.

This is what I was looking for, but it doesn't end here, it requires in the field constant re-election of data and observations to interpret what the photo shows.

Working in the interim with Nax Solutions I realize how important it is that someone knows and interprets what you need to evaluate a crop. A technology patner at the height of "back and forth" as to continue to calibrate and develop new advances.

This is how we face these new challenges, the technology to express its potential requires us to provide feedback and patners to match, something that NAX completes.

ING. AGR. F. C

Northern Region Technical Advisor.