The agricultural sector is one of the most important economic areas of a nation, since it not only generates monetary income, but also provides social welfare by ensuring that citizens are fed. To achieve the above, crops need to be managed efficiently to increase yields.
In that sense, in the current context the presence of the crown virus has limited a little the agroproductive activities because of the confinement and the fear that some technicians and producers have of contracting the virus when they move to the production units or simply when they go out to the cultivated areas.
This situation has led to the development of precision agriculture, which is aimed at achieving technological advances that allow virtualization in terms of crop management, creating the possibility of producing food more accurately through portable devices such as remote sensors that can obtain the necessary information on climate, soil, crop yield and other indicators of interest. Crops can be monitored through smart phones, since it is a device that has become one of the most used technological tools by a large part of the world's population.
Design made by @amestyj 2020, with own images and public domain 1 2
One of the Latin American countries that has started testing this technology is Costa Rica, starting with the training of a small group of agronomy students, a situation that has become a benefit for them, since, during distance education due to the pandemic, they will be able to be directly involved with crop management. Those involved told the network of agricultural specialists that these advances are a leap forward to sensor-based agriculture 4.0.
The technologies used for the training of the students mentioned above, according to the article published by the network of specialists in agriculture, is from Israel and consists of sensors that collect information on soil moisture and temperature, this information is sent through radio frequency transmission antennas, in addition to receiving satellite images of the plots, this system is called crops. On the other hand, they mention that a platform called netbeat is also used where all the information can be accessed and automated irrigation or fertilization systems can be activated from the cell phone.
Dear readers, once again the technological advances are evident, it seems that we are heading to the era of virtuality in education and in the agricultural sector, the countries should be adapting their educational technology platforms in all professional areas, in the particular case of the agricultural area, it will allow our future professionals to know the virtual and automated processes as long as there is a respect for natural processes, taking into account that many of these technologies seek the rational use of resources needed for production in search of sustainability.
