AgroPages-Adama presents digital solutions for Spanish market-Agricultural news

Angélica Reyes, Operational Marketing Director at Adama Agriculture Spain, presented the Digital Crop Care solution for use in Spain during the Fruit Attraction 2017 fair.

According to her, this tool pivots on three axes: The first is Crop Care Box, an autonomous sensor unit that monitors the state of the crop at the plant, soil and microclimate level.

The second is Crop Care Cloud, a web platform that manages the data of Crop Care Box and crosses them with the meteorological data, the characteristics of the farms and the data brought by the farmer to calculate the necessities of the crops, offering information subsequently with risk probabilities and a list of recommended treatments.

The third is Crop Care App, a simple mobile app that rapidly consults and introduces data [online and offline] about phytosanitary observations, applications of treatment and irrigation. It can be consulted on the state of each of the homogeneous unities of each crop.

The goal is to translate the language of the field for the farmers and anticipate the risks and diseases. “We have introduced this solution for some farms in which the initial model may be the same, but after two seasons, the model is on a farm in Seville that is absolutely different from the one in Lleida because of the different micro-climates and definitively different managements. This system, which learns autonomously through time, thanks to Big Data, allows us to make a tailor-made suit for the farmer that satisfies his necessities for each farm,” Reyes highlighted.

The general director of Adama Agriculture in Iberia, Marc Odenthal, who was also present at the Fruit Attraction fair said, “Digital Crop Care allows us to differentiate ourselves in the market with a service that adds value to agriculture, and we make it with our technological partner Bynse.”

The goal is to be a leader in the implementation of this type of technologies, according to Odenthal, and to support the farmer while contributing to the big challenge of agriculture to offer healthy and sustainable food for a global population which is constantly growing. It has everything within a market characterized by concentration.

“More and more, the regulatory and competitive challenges in agriculture make us concentrate on all value chains, not just at the level of farmers and distributors, but also on the companies dedicated to crop care. Developing a product for this market can cost nearly €200 million. This means fewer companies have the capability to face this type of investment and that has led to a concentration of companies. On the other hand, the farmer more and more has to manage larger farms, a situation that invites him to possess future technologies,” Odenthal concludes.

The Fruit Attraction visitors were also able to consult FitoAid, a freely downloadable Adama’s app that allows them to rapidly seek any phytosanitary product registered through an advanced filter system with direct access to the original official registration of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fishery, Food and Natural Environment of Spain.