24/11/2014
VISUAL, the first geolocation tool to manage crops from mobile devices, lands in the international market.
Experts emphasize that in the next five years the agricultural sector will spend about 3.721 million of dollars in precision systems as sensors or other technology solutions that enhance its profitability. It should be noted that the prices for agriculture products have risen in supermarkets, and however, the farmers incomes have been reducing.
In Spain the agricultural sector produces 38.000 million of euros for the annual exports what means that the field could be an option for future young farmers.
Agriculture seems to be late than other sectors to welcome technology, so there is a long way to go. The information often reaches up to 10 different sources, meetings, reports on paper, photos, which are not always filed well. It is spent time because of a wealth of information and disaggregated between technical, field, and executive team.
Lucía Iborra y Mercedes Iborra, are the founders of the company visualNACert that offers technological solutions for agriculture, as the application web called VISUAL.
VISUAL is the first web based service to create maps and agricultural information networks, that replaces the tradicional method of management through print papers. A geolocation tool “made in Spain” that with only a year old is been already used by 25 important international clients in agricultural production in countries such as Chile, USA, Australia and Spain. This is translated into an income of 500.000 euros. “We are changing the way we manage the field, we know what soils are ready for cultivation or what quality of land we have in a single database that is updated in real time, with the data from field technicals” says Lucía Iborra, CEO of the company.
The success key of this tool is the result of knowledge and experience accumulated in the agrifood sector of its team. VISUAL is a kind of “google maps” for agricultura that allows the agricultural professionals to have all the information of their fields in the hand (from the crop distribution to the plest incidence or productivity) to make decisions quickly. The goal has always been make profitable the agrifood sector. In fact, with VISUAL, its have confirmed savings of one cent per kilogram produced, which <<can mean saving up to 125.000 euros>>. “ We have a cooperative, as client, with over 3.000 fields and they need to control their plots through the web” says Iborra.
Furthermore is an easy tool to use. You have only to register through the web, enter a username and password and enter the private database of your farm. Each profile is defined according the client interest, some users can edit, others just have access for consulting. Share photos and documents, classify the plots, create maps of crops, prepare reports and have all the information about the producer, the commercial, the technical and the representative, the historical ranking of plantation, production per season to see which plots have the best yield, make harvest plannings or control how your crops develop. It is accesible from mobile devices, tablets or smartphones, so that allows professionals to not have to wait to be in the office to know what is happening in their fields, because the information is always alvailable in your pocket and it is show on a map with colors. Improved to 50 percent profitability of the plots, giving work orders instantly and without high cost. In case of pests treatment, it optimizes cost by more than 30 percent. VISUAL is a few months in the business accelerator of the Telefonica company, called Wayra.
Source: La Razón (spanish)
