A Brazil-founded company with its U.S. offices in Indiana, Solinftec is revolutionizing how farmers run their business with end-to-end mission critical solutions, generating up to 70 percent efficiency improvements by turning data into action. With 15 years of experience developing digital ag solutions for the largest agricultural operations in the world, today, the Solinftec team have their eyes towards the future. New AG International EditorJanet Kanters spoke with Guilherme Ferreira, Solinftec’s Chief Sustainability Officer, to discover more about Solinftec and its goal to seek out new ways to reimagine agriculture.
Guilherme Ferreira,Solinftec’s Chief Sustainability Officer
Can you briefly describe your core technology; and what is the service or product that you sell to farmers?We work with SaaS and have ALICE AI as the central point of our solutions. It is from there that we are able to manage more than 11 million hectares of arable areas in the Americas. Our solutions look at over 3.7 trillion data points (units of information). Through our artificial intelligence, we can determine the best time to carry out each operation in the field, helping the producer and professionals involved in agricultural processes to make better choices with better management of inputs, equipment and machinery.
How would you say your technology helps a farmer make better decisions?ALICE AI, our artificial intelligence, has an agro library updated with more than 10 billion information points from the field per day. From this volume of data, ALICE, through the machine learning process, deduces the best way, the best practice, what is working, and shows the rural producer when and how to act, from pre-planting to post-harvest, assisting in decision making in logistics, management, traceability, agronomy and robotics.
Digital agriculture can be quite abstract – how do you define it? Is it only something for the most developed agriculture markets?The term ‘precision agriculture’ was born in the first decade of the 2000s when the first equipment with telemetry, geolocation, etc. This concept has evolved since then.
With the advent of information technology and the internet, there was a digital revolution in practically all human activity, and in recent years it was no different for agriculture, with the insertion of technologies intended at first for remote monitoring, management and control of activities in the field, known as Agriculture 4.0.
Agriculture 5.0 is a natural evolution of this, with the use of new technologies of machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data analysis and biotechnology aiming at four fundamental goals:
1) Increase in business productivity and profitability; through the massive use of data to make smarter decisions in real time;2) Food security, with greater access for all to healthier and more affordable food;3) Reduction of waste, a major problem today in the entire production chain from the field to the consumer's table, where 30 percent of everything produced is currently lost;4) Mitigation of the environmental impact of agriculture, responsible in Brazil for 70 percent of CO2 equivalent emissions, and for the degradation of soil, water and biodiversity.
Where does Solinftec operate, and why?Today, the company operates in Brazil, some countries in South America, the United States and Canada. The company was born in Brazil 15 years ago. Working very closely with producers brings us different views and perspectives, so we need to be in the main agricultural regions of the planet. In addition, these places are a reference in agricultural techniques, and this favors an environment of innovation. When producers see value in a technology, when it actually solves a problem, they adopt that technology very quickly.
We see that agriculture is on the cusp of a new revolution, which will likely be led by artificial intelligence and robotics. Solinftec launched this year Solix, the robotic platform that takes the first concrete step in that direction. With this, we see that we are instrumentalizing and helping producers to continue producing food in a profitable way and with a drastic reduction of the environmental impact; that is, we connect the needs of the producer to the needs of the world.
Solinftec’s Solix Ag Robotics is integrated with the company’s artificial intelligence platform, ALICE AI, capturing information directly from the crops. Photo: Solinftec
Do you work with partners? If so, who, and how do those synergies work?The process of technological innovation at Solinftec is accompanied by the fact that the company is one of the only ones on the market to develop solutions together with the producer. There is no innovation in agriculture without direct involvement with the producer. This is how the company was born 15 years ago in Brazil, initially in the sugarcane market with partners such as Cosan (Raízen) and Clealco. The climate of collaboration is in the company's DNA and greatly facilitates the development of new solutions and the trust to operate is mutual.
How might your technology and product offering evolve in the future? Are there any obstacles that are currently holding back the uptake of digital agriculture?From the growth in the adoption of digitalization in agriculture, there is also a change in the way agricultural management has been structured over the years. Artificial intelligence will transform agricultural management. Protocols, for example, such as those for spraying pesticides, will change in the medium and long term. As a partner company of the producer who develops products together with them, we will accompany this digitization process.
What do you think agriculture could look like in 10 years with the tools provided by companies such as yours?We see that agriculture is on the verge of a new revolution, which will most likely be led by artificial intelligence and robotics. The main point is to develop and update the tools together with the producer, to be with them inside their property, following their day-to-day. Only then will robotics, sensors, IOT, artificial intelligence and automation effectively deliver results to the producer. ●
