What is the future of high-tech farming?

Therefore, it was only a matter of time before businesses like ourselves recognised that smart technology and automation could revolutionise the agricultural industry and improve processes that have been performed manually for thousands of years.

In the past few decades farming has undergone a number of revolutionary transformations, paving the way for agricultural systems that rely on innovation and technology to improve yield and push for sustainable food production and livestock management.

In this article, we'll be exploring how new and current technologies will continue to impact agriculture and examine why they are beneficial.

What is Smart Agriculture?

Smart agriculture is usually defined as the application of IoT within agriculture, but what does that really mean?

Farmers and growers can utilise IoT sensors and information harvesting technology to gather environmental data and metrics to allow them to make smarter decisions, which improves just about every aspect of their operation - whether that be dairy farming right through to planting rotational crops; everything is recorded.

For instance, if a farmer decides to adopt smart technologies in the future to monitor crop growth, they can begin to understand what each crop needs to thrive during that particular season, taking into account weather conditions, flood risk and pest prevalence.

Industry Outlook

The adoption of IoT solutions for agriculture has grown considerably since the beginning of the pandemic.

This is because there have been various disruptions in the supply chain and the shortage of workers due to Brexit-related complications. In fact, according to the Barclays AI Insights for Agriculture, 47% of farmers believe that COVID has impacted their operations.

However, this lag has also encouraged 45% of UK agricultural specialists to invest in technologies to fuel innovation in their operations.

The global picture looks similarly positive, with the size of the smart agricultural market expected to more than triple in size by 2026 to $20.8 billion, whereas the market was worth just over $5 billion five years ago.

Because the market is continuing to develop, there are many opportunities for businesses that are looking to set their operations apart in the coming years.

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Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

Source: LettUsGROW