Arc GIS takes farms’ efficiency to industrial level

Which sector is the “benchmark” when it comes to production efficiency? The automotive industry? Thanks to digital farming the agricultural sector is rapidly becoming familiar with production standards such as “just in time” logistics, zero wastage of supplies and real time response against plagues and diseases. In other words, farms are operating more and more as agricultural factories.

Complete farm management system

Stemming from georeferencing data, the Arc Gis platform integrates agronomical functions with any ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). As a result, a complete farm management system which covers agronomic (soil, plants and climate conditions) and business administration indexes can be created.

This tool is provided by Esri, the 6^th largest global software company and the 1^st on Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which helps its clients by crossing data from images, maps, sensors in an integrated single platform.

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Marlon Suenari: “The farmer becomes a manager, and not just a grower. He will start operating his farm as a business, which is a big difference.”

“Esri was established in 1969. We invest 28% of our revenue in research in order to integrate data and software. We use Big Data, Predictive Analysis, Machine Learning and IoT to achieve higher levels when it comes to strategic decision making, control, productivity and reducing costs,” says Marlon Suenari, Esri Agribusiness specialist.

Holistic

According to him, the main advantages are a “holistic” management system based on a large number of variables, and its compatibility with further software and devices, such as satellites, sensors, drones, laser (Lidar), smart machinery, pivots, among others.

“Arc Gis builds a complete historical record, both for forecasting and for identifying problems in real time. That way, a farmer knows exactly what to do and when to do it in order to maximise his profits,” says Suenari.

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Arc Gis provides farmers with a clear interface and shows numerous parameters in order to maximise efficiency on the farm. – Photos: Daniel Azevedo

Released this year, the Arc Gis version 10.7 provides support for managing assets, plantations and environment; controlling harvest, plagues/diseases and fleets; properties certification; and performance analysis. It provides an opportunity for continuous improvement in each production phase on a farm.

Farmer becomes a manager

For example, with the help of the historical record, the decision maker knows the best moment to plant and harvest; how many agricultural inputs are needed; which areas have better results; legal requirements and so on. “The farmer becomes a manager, and not just a grower. He will start operating his farm as a business, which is a big difference,” says Suenari.

Moreover, by monitoring crops real time, the farmer can watch the development of his crops and plan precisely his logistics, in order to increase productivity and reduce costs. “Seed, agrochemicals, water, machines, staff… If you know exactly when, where and in what quantities those are needed, efficiency increases.”

Customised solutions

In addition, Arc Gis is open to include new parameters in its system and can create customised solutions thanks to a robust software programming background. Just to get an idea: Arc Gis adds 150 million maps per week in its database due to the largest GIS users’ community on the planet.

“We can ‘feed’ our system and create new algorithms for all kind of crops. In theory, after identifying patterns regarding any crop, we can check for standard deviations using software and suggest actions,” says Suenari.