Brazilian storage needs a technological upgrade

Despite the production of grains beat records on records, the storage capacity in Brazil, does not match this increase. And, within what exists to store, many units are old, more than 20 years of installation, with equipment lagged by time and technologies. If, on the one hand investments in tractors, harvesters and other implements that already have modern multi sensors receive good attention from producers, the storage area, which is where he will keep his harvested heritage, has not received the same attention.

“It is curious to observe the order of priority of the Brazilian rural producer when it refers to investments made by his company. The first thing he thinks, when he has leftover resources is to buy land, the second agricultural machinery and. in the last items, are either buying a storage system or renewing and improving what already has”, comments Everton Rorato, commercial director of PCE Engenharia company with 19 years of operation and in recent years has been dedicated to the automation sector in equipment for post-harvest. In his view, this is one of the factors that contribute to the technological lag that currently occurs in the Brazilian storage park.“Only to have an idea, in the last five years, there has been a very great evolution in research and development of sensors, systems that capture information of what happens in the environment of a silo or a warehouse, in the large part of storage, it has been adopted by means, by means, by means, by using this, by using this, by using a connectivity, by means, by using a large part of this, by means, by means, by means, by using a storage, by means, by means, by means, by means, by means, by means, by means, by means, by means, by means, by means of the R.

The executive even mentions that this lack of technological update ends up bringing losses to the storer. According to him the management of grain storage demands that the person in charge of this function is well aware of the various factors that happen in the internal and external environment of a silo.“Temperature inside and outside the silo, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, all this, incredible as it may seem, need to be measured to know whether or not it is the time to turn on an aeration, for example. And technologically outdated equipment can make a wrong reading of all these items, pass wrong information and cause a loss of the grains or their quality bringing, in the end, damage”, the commercial director.

Rorato says that it was looking at this situation that PCE developed automation solutions for the control of grain storage conditions. The company has in the area of digital thermometry one of the highlights of its portfolio. Through this system it is possible to monitor how the temperature of the stored grains walks, via an application developed by PCE and, based on this information, make the most accurate decision for the moment. Another technology developed by the company is a portal, available in the cloud and that the storage manager can access from wherever he is, and that presents the conditions in which the grain is within the silo/warehouse. The system presents several information in a very clear way, producing a history of storage it allows a storage process of the“.