From the 10th to 13th October, Albatroz Engenharia was at the 3rd Agricultural Innovation Fair of Fundão. There was a fusion of audiences during the 4 days, from small, traditional farmers to specialists in various fields of engineering, ecology, gastronomy and others.
It was a pleasure to see how these audiences were savvy in the selection of the events to attend: there were early morning conferences with all seats taken while others in the middle of the afternoon were less popular. During the weekend, especially on Sunday, we received visits from agriculture connoisseurs who, during the other days, are busy producing on their farms.
Such a meeting is a great opportunity to hear first-hand the real needs perceived on the farms, the dreams and frustrations from those who strive to move forward, be it due to economic, regulatory constraints, lack of qualified personnel or even the weather, as the effects of climate change were an implicit, if not explicit, topic of many conversations.
To the corner of Albatroz Engenharia arrived narratives of uncertainty and curiosity. We heard many people say “I have more questions than answers” and the sound of the conference that was heard in the hall of the Pavilhão Multiusos brought the echo of several speakers with equivalent messages: we heard speakers saying “plainly speaking, we don’t know, but if get together, we can learn.” There are also areas in which there is confidence and satisfaction – gastronomy was one of them – and this is where curiosity and the desire to innovate stand out.
We realize that there are multiple needs in Albatroz’ R&D areas, in this case remote detection and intelligent systems to make significance of collected data, making it necessary to establish sensible business cases and, in many cases, work in partnership to create solutions that effectively respond to actual needs. It’s a bottom-up approach that requires time and dialogue.
Finally, we want to highlight the presence of children. It is common to consider that they are “noise” in these types of exhibitions and there are always parents apprehensive about possible damage they might cause. Notwithstanding the risks – our UAS were available and off – we prefer to think that we are attracting the STEM students of the future and that we are training the first generation of workforce that will be “native” in artificial intelligence 😊