The days of farmers pouring over a Farmer’s Almanac for answers about what and when to plant are gone – like dust in the wind. As the market has expanded worldwide and become more sophisticated, so have the challenges facing farmers and their questions about how to move forward.
They want information and advice. BIT S.A., headquartered in Argentina with offices in Spain and Brazil, has made its mission to provide intelligent agribusiness solutions to help farmers and companies. And BIT is using SAP software as the seed to make those operations more efficient, sustainable, and productive.
For a good night’s sleep
Today, agribusinesses, including farmers, must deal with domestic and global competition, shrinking resources, rising material and transportation costs, labor shortages, environmental issues and regulations, and more. So, they want answers to the questions that keep them awake at night: How do I ensure the ongoing health of my animals, soil, and crops? How can I increase yield? What’s happening with the weather? How can I improve my farm management in general to meet my goals?
And then there are questions about what’s happening outside the farm and worldwide. What’s the market demand for chickens? Or wheat? What’s the going price for feed? What can I get for my products?
Agribusiness advisors need more than just expertise to provide answers. Today, they must also offer advanced technology.
“Farmers, companies, and their advisors face great challenges transforming agriculture, livestock, and food systems for a more sustainable and resilient production for a better future,” says Horacio Balussi, CEO and co-founder of BIT S.A. “Technology is the path to benefit the entire ecosystem.”
BIT does more than its bit
To meet the technology challenges, BIT created its Agrobit solution. “Agrobit is the platform for agribusinesses looking for smart agriculture and livestock business management in the cloud,” says Balussi.
Argobit is built on the SAP Business Technology Platform. It integrates with SAP ERP and SAP Analytics Cloud, delivering powerful, easy-to-use farm management, intelligent planning, predictive monitoring, and agriculture best practices. Customers receive the traceability information they need, certified with technology. Argobit even calculates the emitted carbon footprint of a customer’s operation.
As a result, the solution and BIT’s expertise have helped agribusiness companies and farmers throughout the world improve sustainability, increase profitability, reduce risks, and become more environmentally friendly.
In the pasture, in the field
Agrobit has a version for livestock and one for agriculture. It can improve livestock planning by automatically calculating the future profit of each animal based on the income and expenses for raising that animal.
The solution can enhance productivity, making it possible for users to determine the optimum placement of farm animals according to pasture cycle or feed availability and by keeping accurate track of feeding tasks, breeding activity, sanitary controls, and vaccinations. It can also automatically visualize each animal’s development history to help with current and future management.
Imagine comparing several crops and choosing the one with the best future profit before planting. That’s one of the benefits of Agrobit for agriculture. It can provide information on labor, climate, market prices, and more, leading to a choice of scenarios to follow.
It can identify a field’s potentially low- or high-productive areas and include dosing maps for planting and fertilizing. It can automatically compare actual to ideal crop development to help establish expectations and identify opportunities for improvement. With remote sensing, climate models, and other tools, it can provide alerts when issues come up. Agrobit can also offer best practices for minimal environmental impact while enhancing quality control—to name a few benefits.
Reaping those benefits
More than 5.8 million hectares worldwide are managed with Agrobit. Customers using the solution have improved their productivity by 20% on average and reduced the environmental impact of their business by an average of 30%.
Increased productivity has helped increase profitability with a 15% improvement in return on investment (ROI). In addition, it’s helped reduce uncollectable agricultural accounts with financial institutions that have provided loans.
Picked to be a finalist
“BIT S.A., with our Agrobit solution, continues to transform the productive sector, combining innovation, technology, and agriculture—three fundamental pillars that were the key to being selected as a finalist in the SAP Innovation Awards 2023,” says Balussi.
BIT was named a finalist in the “Hero of Sustainability” category of the SAP awards that just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Check out more in BIT’s Innovation Awards pitch deck.
