The technological power reaches the rice
What fifteen or twenty men plant in a day, one machine can do it too. Renting a seeder not only costs about $ 40 less per hectare, but it also shortens the time, improves production and the quality of the grain.
The work of this machine is completed by other machines: a tractor that follows the laser signal of a transmitter to level the ground, a drone or a helicopter that fumigate and a weather station that records climate data. In the words of Heitel Lozano, president of the Rice Growers Corporation of Ecuador (Corpnoarroz for its Spanish acronym) technology is no longer an option, “it is a must to compete with the world.”
That’s just a sample of what is happening in Ecuador. In New York, it was presented recently: The tractor-robots and the drone-shepherds that come to the farms.
With all the technology of today, the goal of the producers of Guayas is to create an agency, a research center, that brings several aspects: seeds, technology, integrated pest management and climate. They do it, says Jorge Suarez, because they have not found support at the state level.
Because in the agricultural sector there are other technological elements in other areas, such as cocoa, and one of them is the computer-controlled irrigation.
“It will be a starting point. But there are some varieties, which reaches even the application of chemicals; There are days when the temperature is very high and sometimes due to ignorance applications are not made,” says Lozano.
