If Spain wants to save the countryside, you already know what you have to do: precision agriculture

Increase in costs, water and climatic problems, European regulations, ecological demands, pests, retirement, lack of labor, industrial crisis, international competition … The Spanish field accumulates the problems and, instead, the solutions are scarce.

Above all, because the only medium term is clear, but carrying it out is devilishly difficult: precision agriculture.

What is precision agriculture? As I remembered a couple of days ago, Manuel F. HerradorProfessor at the UDC Civil Engineering School, he always says that, in the future, experts will be horrified how much of our way of building was summed up in two words: Brute Force.

They are the same words that perfectly define agriculture of the last decades. ‘Precision agriculture’ is an elegant way to say that we are trying to change it.

And it is not easy. Especially since the main problem of standard agriculture is that it is an activity that continues to develop in open systems. That is, environments “almost unpredictable and full of risk in which Two nights of frost mean losses of up to 9 million euros“

Efforts to improve agriculture have historically focused on “break that opening“. Since 1850, when in the Netherlands they began to use greenhouses at the productive level, the key strategy has been to create physically closed environments. In Spain, we know a lot about this.

The problem is that the greenhouse strategy is not enough.

Is there alternative? The other option is to inform the ecosystems in which we work. Today, thanks to agronometric satellites, We have capable technology to monitor in real time pests, diseases or water distribution. We can do it, in fact, with a 30 centimeter resolution (and with drones we could improve it to almost ridiculous limits).

We can also manage crops efficiently and personalized. And the promise of that management is enormous: “A PWC study for the Business Association for Plant Protection (AEPLA) estimates that boosting precision agriculture could increase agricultural production by more than 54,000 million euros up to 2050”.

We talk about a productivity eight times higher than the current one.

So much? Well, as I say, that is “the promise.” As Roberto Ruiz saidBBVA agricultural business, it is “better controlling supplies, to better control fertilizers, phytosanitary products, etc.” The potential is huge; The real impact depends on many factors.

But it is important to keep in mind that we are not talking about a futuristic. We carry more than A decade with solutions of this type and the results are beginning to arrive.

And why don’t we move towards that world? That is the big question, right? Spain is an agroganadero giant and has been going through more than important problems for years … Why is the evolution of the field so slow? Nobody see that time runs out?

And the truth is that they see it. But the situation is very uncertain and the lack of generational relief atenza a good part of the sector in a stagnation that is difficult to leave. From there arise phenomena like Lto financing the field: phenomena capable of solving many of these issues, but that drag your own (and huge) problems.

Spain plays its agricultural future in the coming years. The good news is that we know what the way is.

Image | Jed Owen

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