Agricultura de precisão e digital: análise da promoção de políticas públicas no Médio e Alto Uruguai do RS

Abstract

Digital technologies in agriculture, such as drones, satellite imagery, software hardware and the Internet of Things, can make agriculture more productive, dynamic and promote data-driven decision-making. In this way, the farmer can improve his productivity, in addition to reducing costs and environmental liabilities due to excesses or errors in the application of inputs. Considering the population increase, new technologies should be used for the production of food, fiber and fuel and that are sustainable over time. As Brazil is one of the main exporters of agricultural products, the use of digital technologies should be disseminated and encouraged either through private initiative or through public policies aimed at producers so that, in addition to increasing food supply, there is better quality of products, increasing competitiveness in the foreign market and heating up the economy. Brazilian public policies, whether by encouraging the adoption of technologies or through government plans from previous decades, helped Brazil to become one of the world's greatest powers in food production. Thus making public policies the main means of transferring technologies, not just digital ones, to producers, especially small ones. Through governmental planning, mainly, the multi-year planning, where the governmental actions for the four years of mandate is described, is one of the main instruments to be used for the elaboration of public policies, as it must be developed based on the needs of the municipalities and elaborated in a technical way. Therefore, the objective of this work was to analyze what are the public policies to encourage digital technologies in rural areas and what are their results in the municipalities in the Middle and Upper Uruguay. Thus, the Multi-Year Plans of that COREDEs municipalities, the state of RS and the federal government were analyzed to verify which public development policies for precision agriculture and 4.0 agriculture were planned for the years 2018-2021. It was observed that among the 22 cities analyzed, none has a specific public policy on the introduction or encouragement of precision or digital agriculture.