In Ecuador, the Norwegian company Yara promotes the so-called precision agriculture, a promising practice to combat climate change, but not so affordable for small and medium producers.
Scientists in a Yara laboratory analyzing soil samples.
A laboratory in Pocklington, England, is an ally of agriculture. It has the capacity to process more than 2,500 soil samples per day and all at the same time.
Then, in 22 days, it delivers the results to the farmer, who thanks to these analyzes can know the fertility of a crop and what nutrients it will need to prepare the soil.
These practices serve to exemplify precision agriculture, which for many experts from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is a practice of the future.
According to an IDB report, this type of agriculture is one of the most promising responses for food security, counteracting the depletion of natural resources and even combating climate change.
“It is a way of applying the right treatment to the right place at the right time,” says the report of the multilateral organization.
But what exactly is precision agriculture? It is about the use of science and technology to optimize the returns of a crop, and reduce the environmental impacts of traditional agriculture.
“We summarize it in the 4Cs: correct dose, correct application, correct moment, correct source or product”, says Yara’s Agronomy manager in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, Alexis Villacrés.
This Norwegian company, founded in 1905 to fight hunger in Europe, has been operating in the country since 2005 with producers of 14 types of agricultural crops.
One of the services is to provide so-called ‘color maps’ to farmers. These are indicators of how the crop is doing, its deficits, in such a way that a producer notices the needs on time and can solve them.
University allies
At the moment, Yara maintains two scientific trials with the Escuela Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL) in Guayaquil.
The first deals with the correlation between cadmium levels in cocoa, which is grown on 600,000 hectares in the three continental regions of the country.
The project is advancing in its fourth year of the six planned, and it is more important because Ecuador is the third largest producer of cocoa in the world.
While the second trial, also with ESPOL engineers, studies the effectiveness of calcium sources in bananas.
“We are also managing thesis sponsorships in nutrition, which have not materialized yet, but we hope to have results soon”, adds Villacrés.
Food for the world
According to the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, agricultural productivity must increase 1.75% each year to feed the world in 2050.
The food needs of humanity are gigantic, taking into account that at the moment the world population is estimated at 7,800 million people.
Only in Ecuador, the 5.29 million hectares of agricultural surface feed the almost 18 million inhabitants.
To move farmers closer to their goal of feeding the entire world, better seeds and techniques are required as parts of the world struggle with drought and arid land.
According to Villacrés, a useful tool is the Megalab Plus laboratory, created in 2023 and which seeks not only to monitor their crops from start to finish, but is also focused on preserving the health of the soil and the environment through the efficient application of nutrients.
Megalab Plus already operates in some 1,000 cultivation processes and has had important results in the production of small and medium-sized cocoa farmers.
Another sector that uses this solution is the banana industry, which has achieved a 7.8% increase in the export of banana boxes compared to last year.
It’s for everyone?
Precision agriculture also involves the use of machinery, technology, advanced drones, data analysis, and real-time monitoring.
Some large agricultural companies are already using tractors ‘without drivers’, says the IDB report. These vehicles apply agrochemicals with almost perfect precision, saving resources and minimizing the carbon footprint.
All these practices are expensive and complicated to achieve. “As promising as precision agriculture may seem, it is not yet clear whether it can be successfully adopted by small and medium-sized farmers,” says the IDB.
For this reason, the organization advocates that the technology used in this practice continue to drop in price, and that the largest farms share their knowledge with the small ones.
