An interesting event took place at the recent meeting “Women in agriculture on the road to digitalization” in the city of Talca; the event organized by the Red de Asistencia Digital Fortalece Pyme Maule and Corfo, took place at Inacap Headquarters in Talca, and included 5 talks and two discussion panels that addressed various topics on digitalization in the agricultural sector and the role of women. Several members of the Association of Women in Agriculture participated in them.
“The first objective of the event was to make it visible that there were women who were intervening in productive processes through digitalization; second, the fact that it is necessary to get together to talk because we have common problems and that, in addition, each of the different regions are trying to move forward. The objective is also for the new generations to be able to see that it is possible, that technologies are not masculine, that they do not have gender and that, in addition, for women they create time for us and we always have a time problem,” said Paula Gajardo, Executive Director of the Digital Assistance Networks Program of the Fortalece Pyme Maule project, member of Think Agro of the University of Talca.
The event, which brought together more than 50 women in person and was broadcast via streaming, was attended by the Director of Corfo Maule, Paulina Campos: “We support the Fortalece Pyme project, which is a network and territory management project that is present in all regions in Chile; in the particular case of the Maule region, it is a project that seeks to digitalize small and medium-sized companies in the agricultural sector and they organized this activity that we hope can continue and which is a meeting of women in the agricultural sector of the Maule region, where they exchange experiences, where the importance of digitalization and technologies associated with industry 4.0 for the agri-food sector is recognized,” the Director explained.
Talks and Panels
The first two talks of the day were: “AgroConectadas Digital School: Empowering female entrepreneurship”, by Karinne Zúñiga, CEO of AgroConectadas; and “AgroTech Chile: A new guild for a more efficient and sustainable agriculture 4.0”, by Claudia Barriga, member of the board of directors of AgroTech Chile.
“My presentation was about sharing the experience and how the AgroTech Chilean community is developing. I believe that these are key instances for the industry because they allow us to connect and, ultimately, generate networking among people who are developing things, which ultimately converge on a common theme, which is to have better agriculture. I am very pleased to have participated, I hope that this was useful and that the people who were connected via streaming were also able to be part of it,” said Claudia Barriga, who is also Director of Business and New Projects at Smartcherry and partner at Amagro.
After the presentations, the first panel discussion took place, which was moderated by the Executive Director of Fortalece Pyme Maule, Paula Gajardo, who is also a member of Amagro. Next, Paula del Valle, also a partner of Amagro, and a quality advisor in post-harvest and innovation in berries, spoke.
“Today we talked a little about internal strategies of companies that provide digital solutions for the industry, about the main problems that arise through the experience I have with “My Blue Project” and how to better manage development and how to achieve greater usability and what they like to see from the user’s point of view; we also talked a little about some solutions that exist today in the industry and that are available to be used in a super simple way. I love this type of meeting because it gives the opportunity, even, to make visible some things that we often don’t have, because it happens that when a person is a user of a software, of a digital solution, they encounter problems but there is no feedback, they just stop using it. So it’s good because then we realize, at least in my case, why these things happen, we open ourselves to new solutions, we see new opportunities for development, innovation and at the same time, bonds of connection and possibilities for collaboration are generated”, commented Paula del Valle, CEO of My Blue Project.
Cecilia Gutiérrez, agricultural engineer and Project Director of Nucitech, a consulting firm dedicated to working on technical issues and sectoral research to contribute to education, spoke about “Women in Agriculture and the digital challenge”: “My talk, unlike the others that were also very good, had a lot to do with the beginning; people today are seeing a lot of technology, everything is coming SmartFarm, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, immersive reality, thousands of things, but they forget that in the field digitalization, digital literacy is very precarious and if you do not meet that stage it is very unlikely that you can continue advancing to use all these benefits of digitalization; if I do not have that initial digital literacy it is very unlikely that I can advance in this much more important digitalization that represents the challenge of agriculture 4.0”, commented the Amagro partner.
“Industry 4.0 for the agri-food sector” was the fourth talk and was led by the Director of Corfo, who also moderated the second discussion panel of the event.
“It is a positive balance, both in person and in streaming format and that is why the director (of Fpyme Maule) asks me to repeat it and I believe that all of us who are here are already collaborating; next year we are going to try to do something with more people and hopefully it will not coincide with the disasters that we have had specifically in the regions of Maule, O'Higgins and Ñuble that causes us to still have connectivity problems; but we are very happy and I hope that we meet again to talk about digitalization issues,” summarized Corfo Maule Director Paulina Campos.
As previously mentioned, the meeting “Women in agriculture on the road to digitalization” was held at the Talca headquarters of Inacap, an academic institution that gives great importance to this type of activities, as stated by its Director of Engagement with the Environment of the Talca and Curicó headquarters.
“It is an initiative that we have been working on for quite some time and it is to give prominence and significant value to the participation of women in many productive lines; today we were called by the agricultural sector, other days we may be called by other entities that we definitely see as an incipient and growing need in our Maule region,” Ingrid Rebolledo said.
In addition to the presentations and participation of Amagro members in the two discussion panels, the event was attended by its President, Patricia Benavente, its Director and Secretary General of Amagro, Carolina Torres, among other members who participated as assistants.
“We congratulate and value the work carried out by ThinkAgro and the Red Fortalece Pyme. Strengthening the digitalisation of women in agricultural processes is extremely important at this time and after the talks we heard, we are completely convinced that we must continue to advance in this area. The event was of a very high standard, both in the excellence of the content, the organisation and the contacts we were able to make”, concluded the President of Amagro, Patricia Benavente.
