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July 06, 2022
From cultured meat to the field without tractors
The need to add value in the bioeconomy of corn, one of the largest sources of "issuance of dollars" in Argentina; the challenges of food systems; the technological and organizational revolution that the sector will undergo in ten years' time; the perspective of the largest poultry company in the country and one of the largest generators of employment, and even the role of corn in artificial meat.

These were some of the enormous topics addressed by the panel “Institutions, companies and technologies for the development of the chain”, moderated by Fernando Vilella, director of the FAUBA Bioeconomy Program, in which Gabriel Delgado, representative of the Inter-American Institute, presented of Cooperation for Agriculture (IICA); Gustavo Grobocopatel, president of Los Grobo, and Joaquín De Grazia, president of Granja Tres Arroyos.

Referent and transformer of the productive reality, Gustavo Grobocopatel put innovation as the flag of development. "Innovation breaks the line and generates new floors and scenarios that until then had not been imagined," he said.

The agribusiness entrepreneur assured that he perceives more and more clearly that the field of the next few years will be very different from the current one as a place of production, due to the convergence of innovation in the processes. "There will be more robotization, fields without tractors, machines that will not work by traction, and equipment to inject seeds and inputs into the soil," he described, in addition to the growing emergence of a model that will use biological products to control weeds and insects. For ten years from now, Grobocopatel projects a "more agroecological" agriculture.

This technological convergence is also combined with more efficient logistics, with an "uberization" of transport and the consolidation of fintech companies as providers of financial services for the sector. "Artificial intelligence is going to change the way of linking in the value chain, with the particularities of each link, helped by digitization," he assured.

Products will also be the focus of innovation, he said. Artificial meat will be one of them, and he predicted that corn will have its place there too.

In this new scenario, talking about value chains will be insufficient. For Grobocopatel, it will rise to the dimension of ecosystems, with service providers of all kinds.

Beyond his positive view of what is coming for the agricultural sector, the businessman admitted that this technological revolution may not make us happy and may cause pain. "Society is not prepared for this transformation, and less so the State, which is thinking more about politics and elections than about transforming people's lives," he warned.

Along these lines, he called for a greater participation of the private sector and institutions. “Leaving this transformation in the hands of politicians will be difficult; we entrepreneurs are going to have to get involved”, he anticipated. He believed that the organizations of productive chains are going to have to lead this change from the institutional point of view: “Hope is the key that moves us and the role of Maizar is transcendental, not only as a disseminator of technologies, but also from its place in the society to accompany the challenges that are coming”, he exemplified. See complete note in → ruralnet.com.ar

Automatic translation from spanish.

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