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Agri Business Review | Friday, February 04, 2022
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The agriculture industry has begun to leverage innovative technology, which will revolutionize the agriculture field by gaining profit and completing the work in no time.
FREMONT, CA: AgTech can transform farm operations, minimal farm operations. . To sustain a world populace anticipated to attain 10 billion by 2050, the enterprises need to double the world's agricultural production over the following decades. Several global trends are emerging, influencing food security, poverty, and the overall sustainability of food and farming systems and leveraging digital technology, usually referred to as AgTech. Here are four AgTech trends to watch for in the coming years.
Blockchain
Even though blockchain technology is related to virtual currencies, the technology has a vast application and can transform traceability for food. Blockchain minimizes the inefficiencies, and fraud enhances and improves food safety, farmer pay, and transaction times. Food safety and authenticity are the first factors the customers and farmers would focus on. Blockchain is used to give the people pure and authoritative records of where their food has been and where it comes from. Furthermore, blockchain technology prevents price extortion and slow payments while eliminating the middleman and lowering transaction fees, which leads to better fairer pricing and helps smallholder farmers attain a more significant part of their crop value.
Drones
The invention of drones is considered to help the agriculture sector in several ways. First, drone technology is used throughout the crop cycle for many tasks and operations, such as the following.
Crop spraying: Drones help scan the ground, spraying the crop in real-time for even coverage. The result of the spraying mechanism tends to be five times faster with drones than with traditional machinery.
Planting: The invention of drone technology and robotic planting systems have helped decrease planting costs by 85 percent. These systems permit shooting seeds and nutrients into the soil, enabling all nutrients necessary for the growing crops.
Health Assessment: by scanning a crop using each seen and close to-infrared light, drones help notify the changes in plants by monitoring their health, alerting farmers of disease, and allowing them to take prompt action.
In a nutshell, drones can help maximize the inputs, react faster to threats, save time for crop surveying real-time mapping, and aid in offering an estimate of yield.
Machine Learning and Analytics
It's observed that farmers spend lots of money per annum on seeds and fertilizers. Still, they lack reliable information about deciding which source to buy and which fertilizer or nutrient will give better yield in a particular region. Artificial intelligence and machine learning play an important role here. Machine learning and analytics are used to get data for trends in every sector, and the agriculture sector is no exception. For example, machine learning predicts which traits and genes will be the best for the production of crops, giving farmers the best breed for their location and climate. Machine learning techniques use satellite data to differentiate within the crops. The method also provides valuable information for crop coverage, logistics, and commodity markets. The intersection of robotics and data from an increasing number of linked farms will boost this trend further. As technology and its innovation increase, it becomes powerful. Machine learning and advanced data analytics enable to process of vast amounts of data.
Internet of Things (IoT)
The Internet of Things (IoT) proves to be a revolutionizing technology for many sectors and agriculture. Several remote sensing techniques, from in-field sensors to drones to satellite imagery, allow farmers to view their crops differently. With the data networks like 4G, computing, and sensor technology, farmers can now access a broad area with field-level detail. For example, sensors can monitor moisture levels, soil conditions, sunlight, wind speed, and other factors, whereas the sensors on animals can track health, fertility, location, and progress. The future of agriculture is the connected farm, and new lightweight sensors can provide farmers with far more profound and more accurate insights into every part of their farm operation.
Agriculture will no longer depend on applying water, fertilizers, and pesticides uniformly across entire fields that were done traditionally with the workforce. Instead, farmers will use the minimum quantities required and target specific areas. In addition, future agriculture will use technologies such as machine learning, temperature and moisture sensors, aerial images, and drones. As a result, the agriculture sector can yield more efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly farms by leveraging these technologies.