Necessary Evolution of Concepts and Technologies

No technology can turn a wrong concept into a winning path. A wrong concept can be relative to the times; something that solved a major problem may now become the main problem, not because of the evolution of technology but due to the difficulty in changing the concept upon which the technology is based to address new challenges.

Speaking with several executives from agricultural machinery manufacturing companies, most agree that the future is moving towards lighter, cheaper, and smarter mobile platforms that integrate intimately with agricultural systems. However, they believe this will happen in 12 to 20 years. The dynamics introduced by new technologies like generative AI suggest exponential jumps in reducing the time it takes for new technology to become prevalent. I understand the mindset of linear changes inherent in agricultural culture, but this no longer depends on the culture and perspective of agricultural machinery manufacturers. It depends on external factors driven by new and strong forces pushing for necessary changes and by new technologies that will enable new players to emerge with good chances of implementing solutions based on more winning concepts.

No technological advancement can solve a wrong concept. Promising that a sprayer weighing over 20 tons, working at more than 20 km per hour, with high operating costs and a purchase price of over $500,000 will treat plant-by-plant within six years is feasible but impractical. The technology gets there, but the concept does not. How can a Midwest American producer who applies a sprayer at most three times in a season benefit from this? Those three applications together do not add up to a fraction of a second of interaction between the technology embedded in the machine and the plant. The problem is not the technology but the concept of the sprayer, which is designed to spend the least amount of time possible in one place in the field. Its viability is directly related to passing as quickly as possible from one plant to another distant plant. The ability to interpret the agricultural ecosystem of this concept is very limited. The difficulty of making more passes with a sprayer is not a technological issue but a structural one that encompasses conception, the productive culture of the manufacturer, complex commercial issues, and inertia fed by over 100 years of success doing the same thing. The solution is a lighter, cheaper, smarter system that can live in the field. The main point is who is closer to achieving this: an Agtech starting from scratch or an agricultural machinery manufacturer that needs to undergo a traumatic transformation to achieve this manufacturer, complex commercial issues, and inertia fed by over 100 years of success doing the same thing. A distribution and after-sales system cannot survive abrupt technological changes. The solution is a lighter, cheaper, smarter system that can live in the field. The global technological dynamic and the needs of new agriculture do not allow that time.

Today, all insecticide applications in Brazil are carried out across entire fields. The agricultural operation, from sampling to handling sprayers, does not permit anything else. The issue is that the need to keep up with the pest cycle is not resolved with the current operation. If we hypothetically imagine the size of the problem, if we gather all individuals of any target insect within a hectare ready for spraying, they certainly do not cover 0.1% of a hectare; if this is at the beginning of pest colonization in the field, where populations are smaller, this proportion of insects per hectare is much lower. The conclusion is that more than 99.99% of an expensive and highly controversial pesticide, due to environmental, public health, etc., is wasted because current agriculture does not have an operational system that allows for a solution to these problems. The current sprayer has very little to say in these cases. Most of the volumes of chemicals used for crop protection are justified by a defective agricultural operation, not by the dynamics of agricultural ecosystems. New concepts, like living in the field, provide answers to these problems. The current ones do not!

Large machines are not the problem. Here in Brazil, the fastest-growing Agtech is Grunner . Its success lies in a technological approach supported by pragmatism, which generated a new concept on top of a large machine, and that concept is being applied to other functionalities. Their proposals are always intelligent and make it very clear how they solve problems. It's also not about niche companies; retrofitting has its place, and there are very good Agtechs working with good results on this issue. It's not that Solinftec will impact the machinery market in a short time. It's about which concept will ultimately prevail and how the players are positioning themselves around it. What Solinftec can do in the short term is demonstrate that there are better paths for current agriculture. And surely this will be embraced by many other Agtechs because it is a huge business opportunity and because it is inevitable for their survival. I have the impression that this will also change the focus of the chemical industry, especially with the issue of biologicals.

Everything is conditioned on us continuing to execute solidly and continuously the growth of our platform. We are working towards delivering a robot to the farm gate that the producer can put to work immediately most simply and enjoyably possible.

Of course, for quite some time, all technologies and concepts will coexist in the same world; the issue is not waking up one day to find that this world no longer exists. Producers indeed have a sentimental relationship with their traditional agricultural machinery, but it is also true that the above structures formed by several generations producing in the same way is the need for progress. Everyone embraces the better option; it is the natural force of evolution. The concept of living in the field not only has the potential to solve many of the producer's current main problems but can also accompany the producer in their future challenges.