The activity featured prominent speakers and national and international industry experts who presented the latest trends and applications of Artificial Intelligence in the agri-food sector.
“After the emergency of the agricultural sector in the region, our farmers lost all their production and today, with the issue of climate change, which we not only experience at a regional, national and global level, we have to implement measures that allow technology to be incorporated into agriculture, promoting and giving added value to everything we produce and, obviously, what it says in relation to the circular economy,” highlights Cristina Bravo, Governor of the Maule region, who gave welcoming words at the meeting.
For her part, Sara Ramírez, regional director of Corfo Maule, expressed that “our institutional sense is to always be the cornerstone of these projects, such as the case of accelerate circular, which is part of the axes that we have prioritized as regional management. The objective of this is to promote the agro 4.0 ecosystem in the region through knowledge, experience and networks.”
One of the keynote talks was given by Xavier Domingo, director of the Applied Artificial Intelligence Unit at Eurecat, who spoke about Artificial Intelligence and the agricultural sector, the current context, application examples, trends and opportunities.
Present at the conversation panel, moderated by Paula Gajardo, manager of Thinkagro, were Daniela Acuña, deputy director of ODEPA; José Antonio Reyes, Faculty of Engineering at the University of Talca and Stanley Best, researcher and leader of the digital agriculture program at INIA, addressed agricultural opportunities to combat climate change through 4.0 technologies, from the perspectives of the public and academic sectors. .
The other two international talks were given by José Luis Molina, executive president of Hispatec Agrointeligencia Madrid; and Giselle Della Mea, founder of 3Vectores and creator of the Design Thinking methodology for the design of circular business models, who also led the workshop on circular business models as a value proposition for a more circular Maule.
In the second conversation panel, topics related to innovation and entrepreneurship for efficient and competitive agriculture were addressed from the perspective of the private sector. Catalina Toro, president of the Innova Foundation, participated in it; Claudia Barriga, vice president of Agrotech; Jorge Moraga, CEO of AgroMatch; and Tomás Valenzuela, Co Founder and CEO of AgroInventario. Alan García, Executive Director of SOFOFA Hub, and who moderated the panel, pointed out that all these entrepreneurs and technological unions are working to be able to add, develop and introduce new technologies to the agricultural sector, a sector that has had many challenges associated with climate change and for which which the use of technology is key. In the Maule region, there is a very active entrepreneurship ecosystem, where the public sector and universities have also played an important role. I believe that all the pieces of the puzzle are there so that we can promote the agricultural sector and the use of technology applied to this sector from the region.
The activity was promoted by Circular Territory, a program promoted by CORFO and the Ministry of the Environment, and implemented by SOFOFA Hub that seeks, through collaborative work and public-private articulation, to generate enabling conditions that contribute to an effective implementation of the Circular Economy Roadmap of Chile, promoting circular economy models that generate positive impact on the territories and their inhabitants.
The event was organized by SOFOFA Hub and G100, supported by Corfo Maule Region and has the collaboration of Eurecat, University of Talca, Thinkagro, Innova Foundation and Maule Alimenta Regional Strategic Program.
