先正达深入数字农业
1 三月 2023 As one of the largest providers of crop inputs, 先正达 is known for introducing new and innovative products. The company’s research and development (R&D) division continues to offer a regular stream of new solutions, but that’s only part of the company’s technological advances.
我们与先正达数字农业解决方案负责人 Ron Cowman 坐下来讨论农业技术。
ABG: How does Syngenta define ag technology?
RC (Ron Cowman)： 这个问题你会得到多个答案，但从我们的角度来看，我们的工作受制于（两者中任意的）精准农业技术或决策农业技术。
我们将大部分精力集中在技术决策方面。这意味着我们的技术平台以及在此基础上构建的工具真正专注于农场管理、记录保存系统，这样我们就可以了解田间正在发生的事情、这些管理实践的应用方式、应用投入、营销决策和投资回报。
这就是我们所说的农学与经济学。一旦建立了这个基础，我们就开始考虑其他可能有用的决策洞察工具。这就是你开始接触产品的地方，比如 Cropwise Protector（先正达开发的十几款数字农业产品套件的一部分，这些产品旨在为种植者提供解决方案，以连接他们的农学数据并帮助他们做出明智的端到端决策），它的核心是一种侦察技术。但它允许实时查看田间正在发生的事情。
这些观点然后被连接到预测算法，该算法考虑到环境条件和在田间被识别的害虫。它提出了我们称之为直方图的东西。它显示了害虫的存在与疾病的阈值，这样客户就可以确定（是否）进行施药以减轻害虫可能造成的伤害从而符合他或她的最佳利益。
我们把这称为决策洞察力。这既参考田间因素，根据数据洞察力来提供或服务，如果你愿意，然后客户可以应用他或她自己的管理实践和知识来确定什么是适合他们的最佳决定。我们的大多数工具，如果不是全部，肯定是建立在决策洞察技术之上的。
ABG：您认为农业技术发生了怎样的变化？
RC (Ron Cowman)： 当我开始在技术领域工作时，我真正关注的是滞后指标。因此，我创建了一个数字文件柜来记录农场里所做的一切，以及我们看到的变化。除了决策（制定）和洞察力之外，还可以使用哪种类型的风险缓解工具或可以实施哪种类型的预测模型，以便客户、种植者不会总是根据已经发生的事情来工作，而是根据当前的环境条件和可能发生的情况来工作。这可能是最大的变化。现在，我还要告诉你，随着农场继承计划转向下一代，技术采用率会有所提高。很多时候，下一代人对技术更熟悉。他们可能有也可能没有传承给他们的世代经验。他们正在寻找额外的数据集来帮助他们做出决策。
ABG：刻板印象是年龄越大，就越难适应新技术。您看到这种情况了吗？
RC (Ron Cowman)： I think that’s very true. I think there is some truth in, “the older generation may not be as comfortable,” but that is not the norm. In today’s world, technology is very intuitive, and it needs to be built as such. Thus, when you adopt, you understand the value proposition there.It’s got to be intuitive and that’s why we spend so much time relying on our grower-customers to provide us guidance as to: How should the tool be built? What should it do? How should it be delivered? We have them interact with them so they can help find value from it.
随着新技术的不断涌现，它将变得更加直观和定制化。我们提出的许多技术都有标准的核心功能，但它允许为特定用户应用本地方法或本地定制，无论是用户界面、仪表板还是报告功能。它使这些功能可定制，以便用户可以选择更适合或更适用于他们的功能。
ABG：您谈到了技术从被动到更具预测性的变化。十年后，您认为这些工具会走到什么程度？将提供什么？您希望什么样出现什么样的技术？
RC (Ron Cowman)： Well, your guess is as good as mine on this. The area of computational agronomy is likely the next area. And what I mean by that is where you’re really in depth at, and how the plants grow and interact with all the environments around them. The more we know about the plant interaction within that specific environment, the more detailed and prescriptive your data insight will be.Things like phenology will be really, really important as we start to think about predictive algorithms, because predicted algorithms are dependent upon historical basis and what that historical base is attached to. The more detailed analysis we have of the growing environment, the soil, the plant itself and the interactions between all those environmental conditions will be a key piece into that agronomy insight or that predictability model.
从这个角度来看，这就是未来的发展方向。然后，从设备的角度来看，自动化领域——无人驾驶拖拉机，我认为这一切都会在未来发挥作用。
我认为这样做一定能提高效率，但各公司肯定也致力于实现这一目标。然后，精准应用技术领域即将出现，无论是 See & Spray 技术还是单个应用单元内的多个 AI，这些精准技术也都将发挥作用。
ABG：您如何确保在 15 年前就开始筹备的所有项目能够与交付给农民或零售商的工具相匹配？
RC (Ron Cowman)： Well, there is a lot of collaboration and planning that our digital team does with our R&D team and with our marketing teams. As these AIs come into the staging environments. I would go back to our three-step process, first identifying the customer problem, then identifying the solution to that problem, and then thirdly, taking a digital tool and enabling that.That holds true for an agronomic problem as well, which is the basis for how our AIs are developed. If you think about an AI that comes into a staging environment, let’s just say for insects, we know that as part of that enablement you’re going to need to better understand the environment by which those insects come to bear and the impact that they have on a specific crop in a specific area.
我们可以开始对需要哪些数字化支持做出一些假设。一旦我们的产品进入预商用研发环境，我们也会在同一环境中测试我们的数字工具以及该人工智能和该产品。因此，在该产品实现商用之前的最后三到四年内，我们与数字工具同时进行了测试，以更好地了解数字工具可以为人工智能或即将推出的商用产品带来哪些功能和支持。
ABG：您如何差异化先正达的数字产品？农业社区如何接受它？
RC (Ron Cowman)： You have to take a step back. The challenge any company has with a digital tool is bringing something meaningful to the market the customer has a need for, and it is intuitive enough that it can be adopted, and the value realized. Regardless of what digital tool it is, just bringing a tool to market is only one small step.From there, the real success that you see is when you can have a service model connected to that digital tool so that the tool and the customer and the value come along together. Just as with any technology tool, we must be comfortable that if we have a challenge or a question that we can speak to someone knowledgeable about how to help us walk through that. This is no different than in agriculture, where we bring a digital tool.
我们的数字战略是我们的客户服务战略的一部分，也是我们的产品战略的一部分。因此，在我们的价值链和客户价值链中，都有数字化支持和我们的主题专家。因此，当种植者使用我们的工具时，就会有一个学习的过程。
你可能在某一年看到了某种学习和价值，但第二年，你看到的学习和价值就完全不同了，因为痛点或需求发生了变化，要么是作物不同，要么是环境条件不同。当我们考虑采用时，这一点很重要——工具本身就是工具。
服务模型以及支持该工具的专业知识对于其长期成功至关重要。
ABG：确保投资回报率对于任何产品的成功都至关重要。您能否给出先正达提供的解决方案的实际数字？
RC (Ron Cowman)： It’s difficult to answer that because each grower’s return on investment will be different. That’s the core foundational value to any digital tool. The digital tool must allow that grower customer to track, measure, and monitor his own value based upon how he or she farms in their environment. It’s one of the reasons we do not establish a per-acre value or a license fee on our tools, because we don’t believe that we’re in a position to truly understand what the value is. We may overvalue it, we may undervalue it, but we create a system that allows customization and return on investment to be measured by the user at the local level.
我们从用户那里获取这些成功案例，如果用户愿意，我们可以分享这些成功案例，如果我们获得许可，也可以由我们分享。但它非常模棱两可——就像行业本身一样——关于每年的回报是多少。我们的系统允许您跟踪它，无论它会是多少。
ABG：您提到了 Cropwise 数字产品的 12 个元素，但您只讨论了六个。这些工具是小农户可以使用的，还是仅针对有一定规模的农户？
RC (Ron Cowman)： Great question. And the answer is no. These tools are not limited or developed for specific size of growers there. And I’ll share with you the developmental cycle. We look at a grower’s decision-making process in a market and buy a multitude of crops and geographies.Our objective as we think about the growers’ decision cycle is what digitally enabled tools help him through that. It’s not about the size, it’s about: Do I have a procurement decision? Do I have a planning decision? Do I have a planting decision? Do I have a seeding decision? Do I have a crop protection decision? Do I have an in-season pesticide decision? Do I have a marketing decision? Do I have a risk management decision? We think about all these and then we try to build out specific tools that will assist that. The reason we have the six that I shared in North America is those are applicable today that we’re ready to deliver.
还有一些是我们所拥有的不同变量。如果你考虑到印度的一个小农农场，Cropwise Imagery 在那里应用。有了应用就会有一个比较小的基础，一个不同的过滤器。它是如何交付的？它是通过移动设备提供的吗？它是通过报告提供的吗？ 我们在世界各地都可以看到差异。
考虑到我们在欧洲的数字化支持，数字化工具可以进行广泛的监控以及对最大残留限量（MRL）进行跟踪以及管理。在这里，我们将其嵌入到我们的 FMS 中，在欧洲我们有一个非常具体的工具。
您应该期待一些目前正在各地区使用的其他工具。它们在这里适用吗？是的。这是一个相互依赖的问题，当我们考虑让今天采用我们的核心产品时，我们会将它们推向市场。
ABG：还有什么其他的事情是我们需要知道的？
RC (Ron Cowman)： I think I would leave here saying that as we look at the future of digital agriculture, it is always going to be ever changing. And you might say, ‘well, sure, that’s true for all technology.’ But as we look at other industries around the world, agriculture lags in the technology uptake.But what you’re seeing in the startup community and ag business tech, and as you start to see greater volatility in our industry, digital enablement tools will be more readily adopted because it’s another dataset that a producer can use to help inform his or her decision making. There’s always going to be a need for that.
And as that evolves, I think the need for additional customization and the need for predictability models will certainly come into play as well. So, I would expect that this conversation will be different next year than what it is now and after that. But I fully expect technology in agriculture to be pretty robust over the next 10 to 20 years.
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