Current agriculture is already in a stage beyond automation. Monitoring data from all agricultural operations aiming not only at repeatability, which has always been a basic function of automation, but now self-adjusting, identifying changes in the environment, the way of operating and the various variables that serve for decision-making increasingly bring more yield, reduced waste and control of real working time versus idle time, making the agricultural environment one of the most technological.

Today, all of this beneficial change is being applied to sugarcane cultivation, but at an even slower pace than in other crops such as grains, for example. It also meets the challenges of availability of people (labor). A phrase we have heard a lot in the industry is “sugarcane mechanization is a path of no return”. Personally I agree. Today, unlike 8 or 10 years ago, I see a very large involvement of technology users (machines, implements, software, etc.) with manufacturers. This combination has accelerated the development of equipment that fills this gap that was previously heavily used by manual labor.

The reports in any part of the country, whether in the Central-West, Central or Northeast, are mostly the same, it is very difficult to increase the number of employees or even replace those who retire. I had the opportunity to talk about this with many plants in different places around the world, and the problem is the same. In a conversation with a plant in Guatemala, for example, a few days ago, it was mentioned that the immigration problem is huge, in addition to the difficulties with local legislation.

When we look at sugarcane and divide agricultural operations basically into 4 slices (soil preparation, planting, treatments and harvest), three of them are already implicit that they will be done in a mechanized way, but one of them, planting, is the that we see live in waves. Sometimes increasing its mechanized or semi-mechanized percentage, sometimes reducing it by using labor for this task. Today, there are several manufacturers of implements for this function that can help the sector to mitigate this fear of planting mechanically, however the people who will operate this equipment, as well as everyone involved in this activity, must always be seeking better qualifications, be it internal training, training or even use of external training, whether technical or higher level to operate equipment that has an important economic value.

A highlight to be analyzed is the economic viability of a planter given the size of the property area. Many small producers only carry out part of their agricultural operation, leaving the harvest mainly under the responsibility of the plant to which the sugarcane produced is delivered. Therefore, the introduction of mechanized planting in these areas follows three paths: the plant itself plants for them, use of service providers or use of small machines that require smaller tractors for this operation. There are more compact machine options that still require people to operate and fully automated line machines that require tractors with an average of 140 horsepower.

I have seen a large number of producers who have been looking for planters in the market to meet their demand, but acting heavily in service provision, thus generating a parallel business that makes the cost of introducing this technology much easier. Drawing a parallel between the past and the present and looking a little ahead, mechanization in sugarcane planting will reach everyone. Whether it is today with planting of setts, or someday with planting of seeds, what will differ from the results achieved in the past and those achieved today is the user understanding the system. To plant sugarcane mechanized, it is not enough to simply have a planter.

The projects involve systematizing the area in a way suitable for planting, adequate soil preparation, use of canterizers where technically favorable and so on. One of the most important activities for success is harvesting seedlings, and even today we see low quality in this activity with high rates of damage to buds. And one of the main points is the lack of a specific harvester for seedlings. All are internally adapted with some tricks to improve operation. But what about the much talked about planter? How can it help us?

There are some manufacturers on the market, with different machine design concepts and naturally different models, which do a good job when taking care of the points mentioned above in the article, however some questions are always questioned a lot, such as:
• high consumption of seedlings;
• due to failures during planting and above all due to the lack of uniformity in distribution;
• lack of parallelism in the plantation, the planters often do not circulate where the tractor is circulating.

These points fluctuate in their level of importance over time. These problems are being increasingly minimized with advances in planters that are constantly evolving, through the use of new technologies.

But here I make a reservation: technology is not just the use of electronics and software, mechanics need to keep up with all this evolution. Let's imagine taking an old vehicle and wanting to add electronic resources and software tools. It actually wouldn't work. All mechanical, hydraulic devices, etc. they must be aligned with the functionalities you want. Where do I want to get to? It is unlikely that taking old equipment and giving it an electronic “bath” will significantly transform the result.

Those who understand this path can now benefit from technological advances, obtaining real-time access to information, records of all operations, alarm records, being able to interpolate this information and relate it to improve processes. The Internet of Things is a reality, the connectivity generated by some data platforms, such as John Deere with the Operation Center or Solinfitec, already have an interface with planters on the market.

To conclude, I leave the following opinion as a message: the opportunities for improvement in equipment or processes are enormous, whether to expand the operational limits of the planters (example: sloped areas), to improve planting on borders or even if we could start thinking about planned micro-renovation with machines that could carry out efficient large-scale replanting of areas with flaws after harvesting operations, generating greater longevity of the sugarcane field. But this point alone would provide new material to discuss. See you in the sugarcane fields throughout Brazil.