By Ashutosh Verma
New age agriculture requires new technologies. Hence, the technology penetration in the agricultural sector is increasing fast. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the pace of this adoption. Here is a throwback to the technological trends in the agriculture sector in 2021.
Climate change and the uneven unruly rainfall have immensely affected the farmers.
Cutting-edge cultivation and agriculture is no more a token of the arduous perspiration intensive field-work for farmers and slow development patient cycle. With the progression of agriculture trends 2021, the previous decade has seen a flourishing rise in agrarian yields, astounding instances of contemporary cultivating, and many more. Agriculture Technology Trends is the most recent innovation in horticulture that has brought about the government assistance of ranchers and worldwide agricultural produce.
The statistics
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, the essential crop yield has increased by half over the last decade. The constant increase in the populace is imbibing up the demand for more food. On the charts at present, there were more than 50 million fewer individuals in 2014 than at present who stay undernourished worldwide. This matter is essential for the agrarian business. People, mostly in Asia and Africa, are leading malnourished lives. According to economic consideration, the share of Agriculture in the world GDP has gone up by 68%. But the consistent increase in population has stagnated the growth to merely 4%.
In present times farmers are adjusting to technical guides to improve their cultivating efficiencies and gain better yields. According to a horticulture pioneer, the production of crops needs to be improvised, with scarce resources like land, water, and composts. Some of the best cultivating tools and technologies are crop monitoring drones, livestock measuring sensors, farm management software, driverless farm vehicles, and many more.
The agrarian revolution in twentieth-century agriculture has radically changed since the introduction of human progress. It has moved from a work-centric industry into a smart and coherent dynamic one. The present ranchers are literate, and they make instinct-based choices. However astonishing this may sound, there is a risk in disguise. To financially savvy and proven solutions, ranchers should utilize the liberal measure of information accessible on the web.
Let’s dive into the trends in agricultural technology for 2021.
- IoT in agriculture: The utilization of the Internet in insightful cultivating is supported with different sensors embedded in the agricultural farm. The various sensors utilized are light, humidity, soil dampness, temperature, crop health monitoring, and so on.
Some of the best uses of IoT in agriculture are:
- Information Collection by ranch sensors like independent vehicles, wearables, button cameras, mechanical technology, control frameworks, and so forth
- Ariel and ground-based drones for irrigation, evaluating crop health, spraying, monitoring and field investigation.
- Geofencing utilizing remote IoT sensors and livestock tracking to monitor cattle.
- Prescient analysis for rain, temperature, soil, dampness, etc.
- Innovative Greenhouse with the help of IoT gadgets and screens, which doesn’t need human intercession.
Farmers have found IoT to be an expense proficient method to increase agricultural production, and hence, investment in fascinating IoT app development must be encouraged.
(2) Geographic Information System (GIS) in agriculture: GIS is an innovation that addresses geological elements in the spatial portrayal utilizing equipment, programming, and information. The equipment is utilized in satellites, Drones, GPS frameworks to find data points and bring data from them for investigation.GIS is also known as satellite farming. In the agricultural area, ranchers can utilize GIS to break down complex spatial information like rainfall, geography, soil height, slant angle, wind directions, flooding, disintegration, and thus significantly more. Few of the satellites have been launched by the government authority or universal bodies. To avail services, one needs to pay a specific fee for accessing geographical data. Some uses of GIS in the agriculture industry:
- Irrigated landscape mapping
- Irrigation amendment analysis
- Crop health assessment
- Land degradation assessment studies
- Efficient drainage elevation models
- Erosion remediation
With the advancement of technology in GPS, robotics various farming procedures are automated.
(3) AI/ML & Data Science in agriculture technology: Artificial intelligence is the utilization of human knowledge through a machine where instructions are fed, which eventually does clever work for us without exertion. The lifecycle of agriculture includes preparing the soil, sowing, adding fertilizers, irrigation, securing crops from weed, harvesting and storing. Man-made intelligence and ML can contribute devastatingly and benefit from their proven data analysis and forecasts. All of the essential farming information gathered by IoT gadgets and ML calculations are handled and channelized with data science. Farmers cannot utilize crude data, and subsequently, information science is helping the farmers with vital decision making.
Few uses of AI/ML and data science in agriculture:
- Yield prediction and quality assessment
- Species identification
- Crop disease and weed detection
- Smart harvesting and pricing decisions
- Meet demand without unnecessary waste
- Autonomous robots for cattle and their wellbeing
(4) Blockchain: When the harvests and produce are prepared, the farmers have a tough time trading for fair deals, promoting, and proving the genuineness of their produce. Blockchain developers assist farmers with the security of their harvests, forestall robbery and misrepresentation, proficiently take care of the supply chain, and create an equilibrium in the food ecosystem.
Some uses of Agriculture Blockchain technology are:
- Food Traceability
- Transparency in the food supply chain
- Agricultural Insurance
- E-commerce for agricultural products
- Agricultural sponsorships
(5) Automation: The most common way of using different technological innovations to update and automate the many procedures of cultivating is known as farm automation. This method is to facilitate the work and time-intensive process of agriculture that challenge farmers. Robotics has evolved drastically and has acknowledged farm automation by easing out the workload on human resources. The international food crisis caused due to the increasing population can be met by producing much-needed agro-produce with less human mediation and that too faster. Drones, custom farm tractors, watering engines, harvesters, and the latest innovation are gifts from agricultural automation.
Uses of automation in agriculture technology are:
- Harvest automation caters for the difficult task of harvesting fruits and veggies. For example,
– Agrobot: harvests strawberries.
– Abundant Robotics: harvests apples using vacuum
- Autonomous tractors.
- Electric Vehicles
- For seeding and watering; and sprinkling pesticides
- Labour efficiency
- Reduced environmental footprints
As yet, there are difficulties of farm automation that should be survived. Significant expenses to take on mechanical innovations, presents a colossal hindrance to entry for farmers, particularly in developing nations. For instance, automated planters should carry water or pesticides with significant weight; the equipment should be made differently, which results in high expense to make it a larger size. Technical issues and breakdown of equipment present significant expenses to fix for such specialized gear. To fully reap the benefits of farm automation, farmers will need to combine their insight and experience with these new advances.
Also Read: Farm Law controversy: How Indian farmers challenging problems and getting things done
(Ashutosh Verma is the founder of Exalta India.)
(Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the author’s and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Autofintechs.com. Unless otherwise noted, the author is writing in his/her personal capacity. They are not intended and should not be thought to represent official ideas, attitudes, or policies of any agency or institution.)
