The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA) released on Wednesday (07) the Strategic Territorial Intelligence System of Agricultural Macrologistics that provides data on areas of production, identifies bottlenecks and logistical investment opportunities. The objective is to identify the best routes and modalities of transport to flow the production of Brazilian agribusiness.
“The Embrapa study, made at the request of the ministry, is available to all government and society, identifying the best interventions to be made in logistics to increase the competitiveness of the agricultural sector,” said Minister Blairo Maggi. He recalled that the content, available on the Internet was already presented to the chief minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, Moreira Franco, and recalled how important it may be for the Ministry of Transport to make investment decisions.
The online platform shows the origin, paths and destination of the main products of national agriculture and livestock. Developed by Embrapa Territorial, the system should help increase the competitiveness of ten Brazilian agricultural chains: soy, corn, coffee, orange, sugar cane, cotton, pulp and paper, poultry, pigs and cattle.
Improving transportation logistics is important to recover producer income, the minister said, noting that there have been consecutive losses in recent years. “Without income, there is no way to sustain high production and export rates. And you have to consider that sector that was responsible for 70% of the growth of the economy in the last year, “he said. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) returned to growth last year, with a rate of 1%, thanks especially to agricultural activity, a sector in which the increase was 13% in the year.
The platform shows the transport modes and the storage and processing infrastructure used until arriving at each port, in each of the ten chains studied. In the case of corn and soybeans, a study carried out by the system showed that 47% of the cargoes already reach the docks by rail. Information is also available by microregion within each of the states. “We know how much each micro-region produces, where it exports and how it has evolved over the last 15 years, thanks to the use of satellite images,” says the analyst.
According to the MAPA’s executive secretary, Eumar Novacki, by the end of this month will be gathered collaborations from other ministries with suggestions of routes and works for the outflow of production. Embrapa is already indicated by ten priority interventions that need to be completed or maintained, including highways like 163 and 080, as well as railways and waterways.
Production MAPAs
Embrapa Territorial, in Campinas (SP), produced maps with data of the last 15 years on area and volume of production, exported quantities and destinations of the main productive chains in each microregion, state and region. The system crosses numeric data, generates tables, graphs and more than 100 thousand dynamic maps. It includes georeferenced data of the logistic modalities used (road, rail, waterway, pipeline and port) to send the production and receive inputs (fertilizers, machines, defensive). It also has information on thousands of storage structures and identified and geocoded processors.
The ten productive chains included in the system represent more than 90% of the country’s agricultural and livestock load. “We did the separation in chains, because each one has its logistics, goes through linked routes, own processing sites and exports through specific ports,” explains analyst Gustavo Spadotti of Embrapa Territorial. “Nobody puts more load on the transport system than agriculture,” says the head of the research center, Evaristo de Miranda. The industry annually generates about 1.6 billion tons. This is more than all crude and processed ore, which amounts to 1.4 billion tons. Annually, agriculture and livestock demand almost 43 million truck freights.
Logistics Basins
With georeferenced information, the Strategic Territorial Intelligence System of Agricultural Macrologistics identified the preferred routes used and delimited eight logistic basins of grain exports in the country. “When it comes to crop outflow, the term is adequate. The production really flows towards the ports, like the rivers going to the sea, inside the logistic basin “, evaluates Evaristo de Miranda. Storage functions as a set of dams and avoids overloading at port terminals and processing units. “The System identifies the best places to invest in storage, today and in the future,” he announces.
Miranda also points out that the operation of the System will be permanent and, with tools of intelligence, management and territorial monitoring, will allow to identify the demand for logistic infrastructure, having as main criterion the gain of competitiveness. At the platform website, logistical studies already performed with the System by Embrapa Territorial are available, meeting the MAPA’s demands. Among them, is the identification of works and priority road interventions to increase the competitiveness of national agriculture.
The Strategic Territorial Intelligence System of the Brazilian Agricultural Macrologistics will be available on the internet to support public and private policies, guide logistical investments, generate scenarios and serve as a basis for simulating and comparing the impact of alternative changes in Brazil’s agricultural macrologistics. In the next step, other productive chains, state micrologistics and new competitiveness studies will be integrated into the System.