A farmer in a pomegranate plantation World Bank
Pixie has the ability to travel between the most remote points of the world, helping people solve problems and make better decisions.
Are we talking about a new superhero about to premiere a series on a streaming platform?
No, Pixie is just one of 45 zettabytes generated globally in 2019, something like 145 billion terabytes.
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Data knows no borders and has the ability to transform lives, regardless of whether it is generated on a mountain or on a plain, or if it comes from the center of a big city or a small rural town.
Their effective use can generate new responses to humanity's most pressing challenges, such as the fight against climate change and food insecurity.
On Earth Day, rethinking the future of agriculture is essential for Latin America and the Caribbean, where agricultural activities use more than a third of the total area, consume 75% of freshwater resources and generate almost the half of the region's greenhouse gas emissions, according to World Bank data.
Data and agriculture
A new World Bank report points out the key role that agriculture plays in the region. In addition to feeding a rapidly growing population, it facilitates economic development, generates large exports, and helps reduce regional hunger and poverty. However, it also faces future challenges, having to reinvent itself to reduce its environmental impact.
The unprecedented growth of information technologies and the intensive use of data may be one of the central axes for the future of the activity. Quality data can play a key role in minimizing the environmental footprint and thus combining productivity with sustainability. Massive volumes of information from multiple sources can be captured, analyzed and used to generate predictive analysis in agricultural activities, improving decision making in real time.
By increasing efficiency and facilitating traceability of supply chains and production processes, data-driven technologies can reduce generated waste, enable circular solutions, promote sustainable input sourcing, and facilitate responsible decision-making by producers and consumers.
“Having greater control of knowledge inputs allows the establishment of risk management strategies and these help to smooth fluctuations in income, as well as improvements in efficiency and access to markets.
All this points to the sustainability of resources, and to strengthen the process of economic and human development, ”says Pablo Valdivia, a senior specialist in agriculture at the World Bank.
New ventures
Innovations in the use and application of data by companies are creating enormous economic value by improving decision-making and reducing operating costs.
Latin American talent is promoting technological tools and generating solutions adapted to local needs.
This is how Curubatech was born, a
Colombian
startup
that since 2019 seeks to strengthen the traceability of rural production, and that already offers technical assistance in real time to rural producers in 7 departments of Colombia.
“The distance and the infrastructure problems make it difficult for agronomists and specialists to visit the communities, which means that these producers continue to use very old techniques, with low productivity, without modernization and a lot of food waste. We seek to structure projects that allow families to have constant income and do them under fair trade conditions ”, says Paula Aponte, CEO of Curubatech.
Through technologies that make connection possible even in geographical points with little connectivity, Curubatech allows specialized technicians to have georeferenced data, which in turn causes rural producers to introduce more environmentally friendly practices and improve their yields.
Together with other associated logistics and production solutions such as AMACA (Agro Administrative Model of Competitiveness by Association), they seek to accompany production from seed to supermarket.
Like Curubatech, a report by the Inter-American Development Bank identified in 2018 more than 450 private enterprises whose main objective was technological innovation in the rural sector, allowing the development of new solutions and the improvement of environmental impact.
In addition to the environmental impact, the ventures have the potential to empower small and medium rural producers, who with more information, knowledge and visibility can enter and compete better in the markets.
Leandro Hernández
is an online producer for the World Bank
