The agriculture sector is adopting modern farming practices with an emphasis on crop health management and sustainability. By leveraging agritech solutions, farming businesses will not only increase their productivity and profits but also meet societal trends toward sustainability. Modern technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, and robotics enable farmers to track real-time problems, use digital tools more effectively, and ultimately strengthen local and regional food systems, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

Manish Dixit, Practice Head at GlobalData, comments: “Farmers are facing several challenges such as rising demand for food, climate change, limited supply of water, fossil fuels, and fertile land. Digital technologies can completely transform the agricultural sector worldwide. However, innovation, strong partnerships among governments, businesses, and farmers, and a conducive regulatory environment are required to ensure that the technology remains affordable and accessible.”

Prathyusha Paruchuri, Senior Disruptive Tech Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Digital technology solutions enable farmers to resolve such issues and increase the quality, quantity, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness of the agricultural production. Smart agriculture practices are transforming the daily lives of farmers globally. Apart from improving business insights and outcomes, digital farming solutions will accelerate the time to market and value, minimize the total cost of ownership and create a positive global impact.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war are creating a price inflation and disrupting food supply chains thereby forcing people to fundamentally change the way they produce, allocate, and consume food. Hence, the latest digital solutions are leveraged to make the agriculture sector more robust, less carbon-intensive, and deliver sustainable crop solutions.

In 2022, Unilever formed a regenerative-agriculture investment fund worth $103.9 million with a primary focus on three areas: protecting soil health, supplying regenerative ingredients, and using technology to accelerate the implementation of regenerative agriculture in the food supply chain.

GlobalData’s latest report, ‘Digital Innovation Case Studies in Agriculture’, highlights various emerging technologies and assesses the return on investment and key benefits of their real-world use cases.

Bayer offers smart pest monitoring solution

Bayer’s Crop Protection Innovation Lab has developed an IoT device ‘Digital Yellow Trap’, which alerts farmers of threats in their fields. The IoT device uses image recognition to monitor the fields, alert farmers of pest migration, and guide them with the necessary actions to protect their crops. According to the company, the device enables farmers to take early action and reduces field operation costs by 94% by utilizing serverless Amazon Web Services.

SmartRural helps farmers adapt to climate change

Spain-based precision agriculture startup SmartRural has developed a location-based intelligence tool. It integrates customer data with thermal, and drone field pictures as well as ground-embedded remote sensing data to help farmers minimize water wastage in the fields, understand the fertility of the soil, and detect crop damages. According to the startup, the tool allows farmers to save nearly 25% on irrigation and fertilization costs.

SwarmFarm addresses autonomous application of precision agriculture

Australia-based agriculture technology company SwarmFarm Robotics used robotics technology to automate agricultural activities. The robotic technology assists farmers to reduce chemical use, save energy consumption, and reduce environmental impact. The company addressed the autonomous application of precision agriculture to improve herbicide savings and increase farm yield.

Paruchuri concludes: “With digital technologies, the agriculture sector can achieve net-zero goals. Agritech solutions bring in transparency and scalability to detect and assess environmental outcomes such as soil health, pest control, and carbon sequestration which can reduce the use of pesticides and improve crop yield.”