'Harvesting data': Latin American AI startups transform farming
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Now, a new crop of Latin American startups is helping do that with artificial intelligence, promising a farming revolution in agricultural giants like Brazil, the world's biggest exporter of soybeans, corn and beef.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIndian School of BusinessISB Professional Certificate in Product ManagementVisitIIT DelhiIITD Certificate Programme in Data Science & Machine LearningVisitMITMIT Technology Leadership and InnovationVisitAline Oliveira Pezente, a 39-year-old entrepreneur from the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, was working at agriculture company Louis Dreyfus Commodities when she noticed a problem in how the farming industry operates in Brazil.
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Producers need huge amounts of credit up-front to buy inputs like seed and fertilizer, she says. But lenders are wary given how difficult it is to size up the myriad risks, from the natural — droughts, floods, crop disease, erosion — to the financial — bankruptcy, price crashes and more.
In 2018, Aline and her husband Fabricio launched a startup called Traive that collects massive amounts of agriculture-related data, then analyzes it with AI, breaking down the capital risk for lenders and giving farmers easier access to credit.
«Lenders used to each use their own (risk analysis) model. Imagine like a giant Excel file,» Aline told AFP. «But it's very hard for humans, even those who are super knowledgeable of statistics and
