Argentine agrotech startups present solutions at Rural Expo

Contxto – Agriculture and technology continue to evolve side by side, especially in Argentina. At least this was apparent at the recent Agtech Conference at Rural Expo 2019.

Running from July 24 to August 4, the Rural Expo runs every year in Buenos Aires’ Palermo neighborhood. Embracing the digital transformation of the national agricultural sector, the Agtech Conference revolved around three overarching questions.

How can technology companies have an agricultural impact? Can technology transform agriculture? In what ways can the industries work together to take advantage of this change? 

Various startups presented technological solutions for Argentina’s agro-industrial sectors. These include digital marketing, animal traceability, crop monitoring, in addition to livestock sales. 

Digital Marketing with Agree Market

Sebastián Miret from Agree Market discussed how his company develops technology for digital grain marketing, permitting users to buy or sell grains as well as oilseeds at fast speeds. With this service, users can access real-time information regarding crops on the digital market. Benefits range from the maximized trading opportunities to optimized operational costs. 

According to the co-founder, most of the pre-existing agrotech on the Argentine market focuses on pre-harvest. What makes Agree Market different is how it digitizes agricultural goods after it leaves the fields and en route to the domestic marketplace.

“Agree Market is a platform through which transactions are closed, reports of buying and selling grains are published every day, and agreements can be negotiated and closed,” said Miret.

“We have counterpart management tools as well as a series of functions and mechanisms so that each user can determine who they want to do business with and who they do no not.”

Animal Traceability with Digirodeo

Dedicated to traceability and digitization for industry players, Digirodeo has come up with one unique solution. Primarily, it focuses on providing clients with more control over monitoring the health and medical history of animals. With this, it presented its “smart syringe” that captures vital information regarding an animal’s health. 

“What we saw is that we have to optimize data capture and that health is essential,” said Fernando Díaz Offeney. “Our solution was to invent an intelligent syringe that records everything we are doing digitally and then pass it to a platform that is on the cell phone.”

In other words, livestock handlers use the syringe-gun to register animals that have received specific medical treatment. The tools record the date and time of treatment, whether they be vaccines, antibiotics, antiparasitic drugs, supplements, among others. Following suit, users can download and analyze the data that the syringe provides. 

Crop Monitoring with Auravant

CEO and co-founder of Auravant, Leandro Sabignoso, discussed crop monitoring via satellites. After all, his startup analyzes satellite imagery to keep tabs on agricultural operations. Thanks to Auravant, partners from over 8,300 professions can make better decisions and prescribe solutions to whatever crop issue arises. 

Ultimately, Sabignoso wants his company to bring Argentina to the next level in terms of “precision agriculture.”

“Precision agriculture is where the expectation is set so that we can produce that extra 60 percent that we are planning for the next 30 years,” said Sabignoso. He added that this tool “is intended for agronomists because it is very simple and fast and will allow them to save the time they need to use in monitoring and decision making. ”

In the end, partners can choose the best strategy to optimize yield. Even better, it reduces costs as well as environmental impact. Today, Auravant’s services are present in 30 countries and watching over 3.7 million hectares.  

Livestock sales with Vaqapp

Vaqapp presented its mobile application to discuss its animal sales services. As the name may imply, the platform specializes in cattle marketing. Specifically, producers can pursue financing over the usual sales channels but also use the platform to reach prospective new buyers.

“This is a platform for commercialization of finance that through different tools and technology, we give them security and we can achieve savings of more than 85 percent in marketing costs and favor direct contact,” said founder Gustavo González Figueroa.

In essence, Vaqapp tries to expedite the sales process over its simple and reliable platform. At the same time, it tries to solve problems that producers usually face, facilitating the selling and buying in a direct manner to reduce transaction costs. 

-JA