“Agronomists engineers are to the field what doctors are to human health, essential in both cases,” says Oscar Llorca, agronomist engineer at LIDA Plant Research – OAT. They watch over the food security of the planet, “we must guarantee and ensure the health and welfare of plants to improve productivity,” adds Llorca. It is quite clear why society cannot do without the work of the agronomist engineer, but we continue to deepen and give more reasons for its necessary role.
- BECAUSE THEY ENSURE FOOD SAFETY
The words of Antonio Tirado, responsible for woody crops in central-northern Spain in LIDA-OAT, also point to the food safety line, pointing out that “it is possible to produce without being an engineer, but it has to be a facultative who decides which phytosanitary products to use and when. We cannot forget that agricultural production needs interventions to balance and control pathogens that cause crop losses.
At the same time, the toxicology of agricultural products or supplies is very varied and although it is regulated and directed by the EU, the existence of so many products on the market makes the possibility of treatments very high. Therefore, it is the agronomists engineers who, under their responsibility, decide the toxicology of the food we consume on a daily basis”.
- BECAUSE OF THEIR CAPACITY OF TAKING ADVANTAGE OF NATURE’S RESOURCES
“The agronomist engineer, is a technician capable of taking advantage of the resources nature resource’s provides in the agricultural field to obtain and transform food,” says Joaquín Gómez, agronomist engineer at LIDA-OAT. In order to achieve higher productivity, “we are able to obtain new varieties of plants or animal breeds to optimize yields, transform the products obtained directly from nature into other elaborated with greater added value, through the agri-food industries”.
- BECAUSE OF THEIR ADAPTION TO NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS
As Oscar Llorca explains “the word engineer comes from ingenuity, from knowing optimate both natural and technological resources existing, as well as adapting to technological developments” And that’s why new solutions creation and products are the key to be the alternative in new agriculture’s development: biotechnology agriculture. Along these lines, at LIDA we maintain a firm committed to green innovation, with the development of our latest generation biostimulants, and plant phytovaccines.
Specialties performed by the agronomist engineer
Finally, each one of the activities performed by the agronomist engineer can be classified in six big groups, each and every one of which are closely related, as a consequence of having a very broad common base. The groups or specialties are as follows:
- Plant production: includes the study of agricultural crops, pests and diseases, as well as gardening, landscaping projects and regeneration of green spaces.
- Animal production: dedicated to the study of animal husbandry, nutrition, reproduction, etc.
- Agricultural economics: includes everything related from an economic point of view to agriculture, both in its macro and macroeconomic projection.
- Rural engineering: its purpose is to address all the engineering problems that production processes present.
- Agri-food industries: considers everything related to the conditioning, transformation and preservation of agri-food products.
- Biotechnology and breeding: it delves into various biological topics and studies the genetic improvement of various crops.
We cannot say it any clearer: Agriculture is what feeds humanity and we must be prepared for it.
