When it comes to agriculture, we are always talking about record crops, productivity, management innovations, and embedded science in inputs. But little mention is made of the enormous work in specialized production support services, which today has a strategic role for the efficiency and sustainability of Brazilian food production.
The Clean Field Reverse Logistics System, a field environmental management initiative, is a good example. Collects empty containers of pesticides used in crops from the North to the South in the country, to give them an adequate destination and to avoid that they harm the environment or pose a risk to the people.
The numbers collected by the program, coordinated by INPEV, are eloquent: from 2002 until today it gave correct destination to 450,000 tons of empty packaging, closing 2017 with the collection of 94% of the primary packaging of pesticides used by the producer. A unique result in world agriculture, compared to other countries of advanced agriculture: France collects 77%, Germany 67%, Japan 50% and USA 33%.
The Campo Limpio system also represented a cumulative sequestration of almost 600,000 tons of CO2 equivalent by 2017, and the recycling of the materials it collects generates artifacts with a carbon footprint three times lower than similar first-time products.
By operating successfully in a country with 8.5 million square kilometers and 60 million ha cultivated, marrying product delivery and withdrawing empty packaging, it becomes a pool of knowledge that can help reverse logistics initiatives in other sectors of the economy (within the National Solid Waste Policy), or even be exported.
Another good example is the Aplique Bem Program, from the Instituto Agronômico (IAC), in partnership with an agrochemical industry (Arysta), focused on good agrochemical application practices. After training more than 59,000 people in the field, here in Brazil, the service has already been imported by six countries from different continents, from Mexico to Vietnam, stamping the Brazilian excellence in agricultural technologies for the tropical world.
One more case, to close: Result, a specialized service for the management of the control of cutter ants in planted forests, for the production of paper and pulp. Saúvas love eucalyptus, an adult nest of them consumes a ton of leaves / year and their control even represents 60% of the phytosanitary costs of reforestation. A concrete appeal inside and outside our borders.
Increasingly, highly specialized management or management services will be part of the field’s productive landscape, accelerating the use of new technologies. After grains, meats, juices and coffee, perhaps the time has come to export intelligence through agro services. And it looks like there is already Brazilian startup (Systech Feeder) being courted in France, in the Fazenda do Futuro project, on account of digital innovation to monitor animal nutrition.
* Coriolan Xavier is Vice-President of Communication of the Sustainable Agricultural Scientific Council (CCAS), Professor of the Agribusiness Studies Center of ESPM