Agriculture is undoubtedly one of the largest industries in the world facing major challenges. Climate change, population growth, and food insecurity are not only bad for the economy; their effects are also felt globally. To survive in an increasingly competitive and volatile market, the future of agriculture needs to change its operating practices – and disruptive technologies are the key.
Agriculture has changed over time to adapt to the growing world population. But with a world population that is expected to rise to 9.8 billion people by 2050, current methods will make it difficult to generate enough revenue to meet demand. Could the use of IT in agriculture be the answer? The sector continues to evolve to meet this future of agriculture challenges and explores how technologies such as IoT and automation can help farmers and ensure the viability of their operations. Here are some of the challenges and benefits of IT in the future of agriculture.
- Smart Farming: Food Security for the growing population
The amount of food needed to feed the world’s population is enormous. Ensuring food security will increasingly be a problem. For a successful harvest, farmers must be able to create ideal conditions for the health of crops and to identify potential threats of pests or diseases before they spread. In the meantime, there are technologies that make soil surveys faster before planting. But they also allow monitoring of plant nutrition and the detection of plant diseases in the grown plant stock. Autonomous vehicles and drones can be equipped with cameras and sensors to collect data, which are then uploaded to agricultural software. This gives the user or farmer a quick overview of the planting and the state of health and can identify possible problems.
- Smart Farming: Smarter Precision with IT in agriculture
Environmental awareness has already increased over the last ten years. For example, agri-business has introduced provisions and incentives for farmers to further increase their efforts to promote environmental awareness. Today, GPS, autonomous vehicles and software enable precision farming and agonism, reducing the need for seed, fertilizer, and fuel. This is cost and time saving for the farmers.
While some technologies used in precision agriculture, such as GPS and remote sensing technologies, are not new, they are being elevated to a much more complex and intelligent level by artificial intelligence (AI). Robotics already makes it much easier for weed control and weed detection. Thus, autonomous vehicles are programmed to visually recognize certain plants and spray them individually with a fungicide or herbicide. The accuracy of AI and intelligent robotics in agriculture can limit the use of chemicals and ensure cleaner agriculture.
- Smart Farming: strengthening our position in global competition
A major concern of farmers is ensuring the profitability of their operations and their competitiveness in the market. Agriculture is on the verge of digital evolution, and digitization is entering numerous areas of business. Robots and autonomous vehicles will reduce personnel costs while increasing efficiency. Using drones, GPS and terrain contouring provides farmers with highly detailed information on water levels and soil fertility in the shortest possible time – the data collected is even transmitted via a cloud. The software provides a clear overview of the operation and data analysis that can be used to make decisions for next year. Farmers will have to introduce these technologies very soon for the future of agriculture.
Wrapping Up
Smart farming applications not only address large-scale conventional farms, but can also become a significant boost for the extension of other trends in farms, such as family extensions in small spaces or complex morphology, intended to specific crops or the preservation of old variety of crops, thus contributing to a more respectful and transparent agriculture in future. In addition, smart farming also has some environmental benefits, such as efficient use of water and optimization of the use of phytosanitary treatments.