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The words belong to Norberto Sahores, an agricultural entrepreneur, co-founder and director of Desab, a company that provides technological solutions for the sector. Together with Ignacio Lartirigoyen, co-founder and president of Lartirigoyen, and Martín Sackmann, Innovation and Development Manager at Los Grobo, he participated in the 2nd. edition of "The Digital Transformation of Agriculture". There they talked about the keys to undertake and gave their view of the challenges of agriculture.

“To undertake is to walk towards fulfilling a dream. In my case, it was always closely linked to associations and teams, which for me implies a greater challenge because the rest of the participants need to perceive the same as one for the project and accept the imprint it has. Sometimes you have conflicts and sometimes you achieve complementarity, which is the objective, but it is not easy, ”he commented.

Sahores is the fourth generation of agricultural producers. He said that he began at the age of 20 to undertake projects related to technology and services for agriculture. "I went to the countryside and that love was transmitted to me by my maternal grandfather and an uncle," he said.

For the entrepreneur, there are four points that must be taken into account to start a project. The first is related to conviction. “The project has to have a heart, you have to feel it. That will help to overcome difficulties and the unforeseen. As well as assume or accept what you miss, because every time you start a path, another is resigned and sometimes one can question that. It's something that happens," he said.

The second point, which according to him assured is independent of where it is undertaken, is what he calls "anchoring". He explains that it is the relationship between the project, the media, the knowledge that the entrepreneur has of the sector and reality. “There, time plays a fundamental role because if you do it too early you can fail and if you do it late it doesn't make sense,” he commented.

“The third is the exit door. Our projects are not always what one dreamed of or expected, but if the conviction is strong, most do not pay attention to it”, he added and remarked: “Lastly there is luck. You always need a little luck."

To the points mentioned by Sahores, Sackmann added one more: the connections. “Today the agricultural sector stopped being closed. It is one of a lot of interaction. I think the key is to connect with the experts, who are often our own co-workers, and with the producer,” he said.

Unlike the other businessmen, he had to work in multinationals. He started at Cargill, then went through Monsanto, Bayer and for almost three years he has been at Los Grobo. Although he has been working as an agronomist for 27 years, he says he needs to add a few more years of experience. “You have to add 25 more years to it because I was lucky enough to grow up in the countryside so I had to live and love the countryside since I was a child with my family. This touch the earth and feel the problems of the producer one lives it in the heart”.

36 years after the founding of his company, while Lartirigoyen also recounted his experience and gave the key to what is important to him when starting a business: never give up.

“In my beginnings, agriculture was not as thriving as it is now, there was still no direct sowing, the agricultural frontier was much smaller. It was a tougher time because agriculture was not doing well, but we survived because we were resilient,” he remarked.

The businessman also provided his vision of the future on agriculture and the challenges that the sector faces.

“All of agriculture is being transformed and today the new generations are beginning to demand something of us that when we went out looking for a market the majority still did not demand it. In the future they will. That is why we have to innovate, improve our carbon footprint and be more sustainable”, he indicated.

“Last year we began to measure the carbon footprint to start a mitigation project and by 2030 we set ourselves the goal of being a zero carbon company,” he said.

On the other hand, he stressed the importance of working with the new generations and developing the interior. “If we want the interior to develop, we have to get people from the cities to go because in the interior there are thousands of opportunities and that must be told,” he said. → www.lanacion.com.ar

Automatic translation from spanish.