Smart Agriculture Cooperation Project Brings Japanese Delegation to Brazil
- CoPADi
- Sep 30
- 3 min read
Article written and published on the Embrapa website (access here) by Valéria Cristina Costa (MTb.15533/SP), Embrapa Digital Agriculture.
English translation by the Project Team.
Between September 24 and 26, Embrapa Agricultura Digital (Campinas/SP) welcomed a Japanese delegation for follow-up meetings and the II Workshop to promote the use of agricultural machinery data for digital and precision agriculture, within the scope of the Collaborative Development Project for Precision and Digital Agriculture to Strengthen the Innovation Ecosystem and Sustainability of Brazilian Agriculture (CoPaDi), carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (Mapa), Embrapa, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica).
The workshop, held on September 26, was attended by the director of JICA in Brazil, Akihiro Miyazaki, who was welcomed by the general coordinator of digital agriculture and connectivity at MAPA, Alaércio Londe, and the deputy head of R&D at Embrapa Digital Agriculture, Júlio Esquerdo.
The main objective of the project is to establish an open innovation environment for precision and digital agriculture. The idea is to drive digital transformation in a sustainable manner, based on public-private partnerships between the two countries, connected by an innovation ecosystem.
Experiments involving the interconnection of data from agricultural machinery carried out with small and medium-sized grain producers in Paraná were discussed during the meetings and presented at the workshop. The delegation's schedule in Brazil included a visit to one of the producers participating in the pilot project.
The data collected during the pilot is being used to test and validate the development of a data integration API that will use the infrastructure of AgroAPI, Embrapa's API platform, according to analyst Eduardo Speranza of Embrapa Digital Agriculture, the research center that coordinates the platform for the digital agriculture technology market.
The Japanese delegation participated in discussions about AgroAPI and new APIs that are being developed with the support of DMX, the company contracted for the development. The business model adopted by the platform should serve as the basis for APIs generated within the scope of the cooperation, according to Ricardo Inamasu, a researcher at Embrapa Instrumentation.
“We will value farmers and their data as a product that can be traded,” he said, noting that the project is open to receiving APIs from agtech companies. Interested parties should contact the project website.
Data standardization - Experts Sakae Shibusawa, professor emeritus at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and Yasuyuki Hamada (photo), executive director and designer at Agribus in Agri Info Design, shared their experiences regarding data standardization efforts.
The professor addressed the smart agriculture standard, citing the ISO/TC347 standard, the relationship between interoperability and decision layers, and data-driven food chain strategy. Shibusawa cited the challenge of standardization in light of the diversity of aspects involved in agri-food systems, such as agrosemantics, models, metrics, and sustainable data in the segment.
For Hamada, the search is for a common data model for exchange, based on automation and efficiency. According to his assessment, data standardization should focus on data interoperability, decision-making based on scientific principles, and best practices. During his lecture, Hamada presented field tests conducted by the company using data from agricultural machinery.
As with the experts involved in the project, Hamada points out that the data generated by precision and digital agriculture should bring greater transparency to Brazilian agriculture, being used to verify and track sustainable practices, providing a basis for audits and reports, as well as certifications. The data generated by agtechs, on the other hand, needs to be stored in secure and reliable locations for use in audits, they assess.
The CoPADi project is led by Ricardo Inamasu, from Embrapa Instrumentation, and researcher Luciana Romani, from Embrapa Digital Agriculture.
