Agritech for Small Producers: The Path to Food Sustainability

Technological solutions are aimed at making mass production more efficient. Companies and farmers who have the financial mechanisms can access these solutions, either by using their own capital or through financing, but  these solutions are out of reach for small producers that in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) represent 80 percent of all companies. The agriculture delivered by small producers or family agriculture is diverse, but the majority is concentrated in the subsistence segment and another small percentage is in the transition segment. According to FAO/IDB (2007), there are three segments among small producers or family farming:

• Subsistence segment: Oriented toward self-consumption, with production resources but insufficient income to guarantee family’s subsistence, which induces them to become wage earners, change their activity or migrate. As long as their access to goods does not change, they normally do not have access to quality food and their living and working conditions are not decent.

• Segment in transition: Oriented toward sales and self-consumption, with production resources that satisfy family’s subsistence. It experiences problems generating surpluses that allow the development of the production unit.

• Consolidated family farming: It has land resources and even irrigation with greater potential, has access to markets with a higher return on investment (technology, capital, products) and generates surpluses for the capitalization of the production unit.

Most farmers in the region use traditional farming systems that include a wide variety of food crops in crop rotation and intercropping systems. A limited number of family farmers practice organic agriculture and monoculture; however, there are no figures available that measure the exact proportion of these practices in LAC.

Indeed, it should be noted that there is a scarcity of information at the regional level that allows family farming to deepen their production and technological situation. It is known that the levels of productivity with family farming tend to be low, due to the poor quality of the soils, scarce availability of irrigation, location on less favorable land for cultivation and low technological level. In general, the yields of family farming are 30 percent to 50 percent lower than those of business farming. According to Gattini (2011), cited by ECLAC/FAO/IICA (2013), 87 percent of family sugarcane farmers have a yield of less than 60 tons/ha, while large technical producers exceed 100 tonsha. Also, 94 percent of small cassava producers have a yield of less than 13 tons/ha, and large producers have yields close to 30 tons/ha.

The adoption of technologies is key to compete, expand opportunities and achieve a successful insertion into global value chains.

To increase the return value of family productions, the generation of product value is essential. This can be achieved through biotechnology by integrating biological models that generate greater value from the emulation or characterization of natural processes without necessarily having to have a genetic modification.

The optimization of production processes through automation helps to increase productivity, reduce collection costs, increase the efficiency of resources and improve access to markets, developing the added value of these basic products through technologies that process these foods with a better nutritional image design.

Processes that optimize the use of efficient and sustainable energy in energy-smart agri-food systems would not only have the possibility of conserving energy, but could even produce it to take advantage of the relationship between energy and food.

At ANNIT, our objective is to integrate technology to make meat production sustainable, impacting small producers by giving them access to a market that pays enough for their production, reducing their working hours and dignifying their conditions so that they can offer consumers a quality product that beneficially impacts nutrition (SmartFood, or foods with nutritional properties that the body cannot produce on its own and depends on them for its proper functioning).

At ANNIT, we developed a data science platform that helps us capture all the information from the family production units regardless of their location, since these units have an IoT system and automated mechanisms for hydration systems and food, which helps us to predict behaviors and improve logistics and sales, as well as to standardize productions in different technological degrees. We add value through biotechnological processes where we increase the nutrients in the feed of livestock animals so that through this nutritional biotransformation, we can generate a highly differentiated product from that of the conventional market, obtaining a greater return for the small producer. ANNIT seeks to migrate our food system to a more sustainable and inclusive system with careful and higher value production that guarantees food security and responsible consumption and production.

The most important factor is to generate quality products that are safe for our families and at the same time respectful of our planet and ourselves.