Agriculture, the world’s oldest industry, must adopt several new, digital technologies in order to remain profitable in today’s age. In order to overcome increased demand and several disruptive forces, the industry must adapt and embrace a digital data-intensive transformation.
With the rise of modern agricultural techniques and their widespread adoption, the agriculture industry has completely changed compared to its technological state nearly 50 years ago. However, in order to cope with the increasing demand of a rising global population, the agricultural industry must adopt new technologies. Artificial intelligence, sensors for irrigation, humidity, and more, as well as other analytics devices, maybe the key to reducing costs and improving the yield of the agriculture industry worldwide.
According to McKinsey and Company, if the agriculture industry were to adopt a fully connected system, the industry would be able to increase its worldwide gross domestic product contribution by $500 billion by 2030. With the constraints on the supply side of agriculture only increasing due to overfarming, overfishing, and gross misuse of natural resources, utilizing data-driven solutions will also improve the natural status of our planet, reducing wastage and overall emissions as a result of farming and animal husbandry. Although the supply side faces these constraints and limits, the demand for agricultural products is growing; with the global population projected to surpass 9.5 billion by 2050, there will be no shortage of the demand for food.
Currently, very few farms adopt connected systems. Even in the US, only one in every four farms utilizes IoT tools and equipment. Since technology and equipment are very expensive and difficult to implement effectively, more complex tools must be developed with the rise of 5G and similar connectivity technologies.
These connectivity technologies will allow agricultural producers, small and large, to take advantage of the benefits that come with a more connected ecosystem, allowing them to thrive and meet the current demand and existing demand of future generations. These many technologies could apply in a variety of use cases. For example, these advanced monitoring tools could allow for drone farming to become a possibility, where farmers would use drones to maintain their crops when they need watering. A sensor would go off that detects if the crops need to be watered and the drones would go over to the correct GPS sensor and water the plants, spray them with fertilizer, and pesticides Moreover, special sensors may alert farmers when disease or parasites come into contact with the crops, allowing them to monitor specific aspects of the crops without menial effort. This monitoring may also extend to flowers and fruits, where AI can detect a fruit’s ripeness by its size and color, allowing farmers to maximize the yield and revenue of their crops.
These many advancements will change the landscape of the agriculture industry and farmers must adopt them in order to tackle the issue of increasing demand and shrinking supply, whilst also maximizing their crop revenues.
Sources
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/agriculture/our-insights/agricultures-connected-future-how-technology-can-yield-new-growth#
https://www-un-org.eur.idm.oclc.org/en/development/desa/publications/world-population-prospects-2015-revision.html
Hi Morad!
Thank you for this informative piece. When everyone is talking about something new, you are talking about the “world’s oldest industry” which catches my eye immediately. Realization of modern agricultural techniques is a hot topic during these years. When I was traveling in New Zealand in 2019, I was amazed by the level of digitalization of agriculture there. For example, the head cow in the farm will be installed with a alarm clock which is set to ring twice a day. When the alarm clock rings, the head cow will know to go to the milking parlour and be milked by the machine automatically. Other cows will follow the head cow and wait in line for the milking. During the entire process, no farm workers are needed to provide any help with the milking. I believe this is kind of agricultural connectivity as you mentioned in the blog.
In addition, my concern about agriculture technology is that less labors are needed as the automation rate of agriculture raises. As long as the development cost of agriculture tech is expensive, developing countries such as Asia and Africa may stick to the traditional models since the labor cost is cheap.
Interesting post. I wonder about the impact if farmers decide to implement these new technology solutions on the dynamic of the industry Although they might lead to single (perhaps double) digit % improvements in efficiency for the farmer, they will provide a huge competitive advantage to the farmers with more cash-reserves (as they can afford these technologies), thus potentially driving smaller farmers out of the market.