Ceres Imaging recently hosted their first annual customer event in Iberia on November 9th, 2023. The event drew over 50 of the region's top specialty crop growers, academics, food processors, and agribusiness professionals, creating a dynamic space for discussions on cutting-edge technologies supporting sustainable and profitable agriculture.
The soirée marked the culmination of a triumphant inaugural season for Ceres Imaging. The event brought together solution-seeking growers and helped build an awareness to a growing Iberian Ceres Community, in a celebration that transcended the traditional customer meeting. The attendees, representing major players like Migdalo, Rota Única, Amêndoas Doces, Casa Relvas, Ravasqueira, Pomobrix, and other external agro-entities, engaged in lively discussions that delved into the realms of sustainability, precision agriculture, and insurance.
At the heart of the event were captivating talks by key speakers, each illuminating the path forward in precision agriculture. Ricardo Braga, a distinguished professor at the Instituto Superior Agrícola in Lisbon, shared insights into the future of tools, features, and metrics in sustainable agriculture—an area of immense interest for the Iberian audience aligning with the EU's new agro policies.
Discussions at the event were focused on sustainability, precision agriculture, and insurance. Attendees were able to get a detailed overview of Ceres strategy and vision for the future of precision agriculture and understand the value proposition of Ceres services and capabilities.
Main speakers demonstrated details to relevant case studies, findings from the field, ROI success stories, a cost analysis of service vs. operations, and shared some recent customer testimonials. Those speakers and topics included:
Ricardo Braga - Professor at ISA (Instituto Superior Agrícola - Lisbon Portugal)
Gonçalo Maia - Ceres Imaging Customer Success Manager (Iberia)
Leonardo Vidal - Ceres Imaging General Manager EMEA & Latam, Financial Services
Matthew Ribeiro - Ceres Imaging Sales Director
- Sustainability in Agriculture (future tools, features and metrics) is one of the Iberian audience’s biggest interests and part of EU new Agro Policies
- Irrigation Optimization, Variable Rate Application, Portfolio Insights
- Mutual Beneficial Added Value (Grower <-> Ceres).
- The grower as a team partner as opposed to Ceres as simple service provider
- Financial Services - Ceres is constantly expanding solutions and ecosystem partners to bring recurring value to our customers, helping our customers share personalized historical and in-season intelligence with the financial services market, enabling:
- Unique risk profile intelligence (e.g crop types, location, yield, perils) leading to fairer terms
- Lenders and Insurers can Underwrite more accurately and faster
- Faster Claims assessments and payouts
- Continuous Crop Monitoring as risk mitigation tool in an increasingly unpredictable global climate change context
An intense Q&A amongst the group continued into areas focusing on a variety of important topics.
“It was inspiring to spend time with some of the biggest and most successful specialty crop enthusiasts in the region”. -Ricardo Braga
“In the coming year, Ceres’ goal is to continue to expand our business footprint into the almond, olive and grape industries as well as other specialty crops, and continue to grow our community in Spain, improve engagement with current customers, increase data collection for better and local validation of agro metrics, funneling field analysis and more accurate predictive models. We also look forward to implementing new products which will help continue to optimize efficiencies of farming operations as well as with sustainability efforts here and around the world.” -Gonçalo Maia
The inaugural Iberian summit by Ceres Imaging was not just a meeting; it was a testament to the exciting future of agriculture, where innovation meets sustainability on the sun-soaked soils of Portugal.