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When you think of technology what comes to your mind? Well gadgets and all. But what about agritech? Agritech is a possible exciting megatrends of the future and is also being rapidly adopted globally.
Besides it will solve an important problem in the future. You see the global population is expected to reach 9.7 billion by the year 2050. By then, resources might become scarce. There might be food scarcity as well. Agritech might resolve this food scarcity issue and help in feeding the growing population.
Agritech, as is evident, is a combination of agriculture and technology. It basically refers to the use of technological innovations in agriculture to increase yield, quality, efficiency, and profitability. Agritech uses modern methods to enhance farming and is rapidly shaping the agricultural economy for a more progressive and bright future. It also make use of robots, big data, AI, and other methods in order to solve the never-ending challenges faced by the agriculture sector.
With its help, crops are modified to grow in any environment, there’s faster planting, and also better harvesting. Estimates show that India’s agritech industry has the potential to reach about $24 billion in revenue by the year 2025, with current penetration only being a mere 1%.
So what technologies are used in Agritech. Let us see:
Smart farming: Smart farming has different categories. It’s used after doing a thorough research and inspection of previous conditions. Weather forecasts to achieve higher yield, automated irrigation, etc are all part of smart farming. It represents the approach to agricultural innovation in the whole by adopting various smart technologies. In short, smart farming is harnessing collected data, analytics, and machine learning to help farmers make decisions about what to grow and how to feed the planet in a sustainable way.
Drones and Satellites: Using drones and satellites allows a farmer to cover large tracts of land quite easily and more quickly. Drones and satellites help scan the crops and fields in order to measure and monitor. Besides they also generate terrain maps. The drone market is infact exploding, and is about to become a multi-billion dollar industry in just a small span of time. Also, drones serve other purposes such as fighting crop disease, pollination, planting seeds, and food security.
IoT Sensors: Agritech develops internet of things (IoT) based software that can track and provide accurate and critical information about the various parameters like the weather, humidity, and current condition of soil. What usually would have consumed a lot of farmers’ time and resources is now available instantaneously and also easily.
Blockchain: One might wonder how blockchain technology can impact the agriculture sector. Well, basically blockchain connects farmers with end-users directly. Consumers can now easily track where, when and how the produce originated. This also cuts out the middlemen and thus benefits both the farmers and consumers.
Vertical farming: As is evident by the name itself, vertical farming involves crop production using vertically stacked layers. Further by making use of LED lights photosynthesis is encouraged, and thus crops can be grown day and night.
Automation: Automation replaces manual labour with the help of software and hardware which not only increases speed but also improve the quality.
Also there are contribution from biotech, robotics, and big data too. All these have immensely improved the food and agriculture industry.
Government initiative: Various government initiatives for the agriculture industry have also boosted its growth. A recent example being, PM Narendra Modi has signing agreements with US giants Amazon, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems to modernise the agriculture sector. These tech companies will be given access to data and statistics available on India’s agricultural ecosystem since the year 2014. The basic idea is simple: Seed all information such as crop pattern, soil health, insurance, credit, and weather patterns into a single database. Then, these companies can analyse it through AI and data analytics. Then after, the companies will develop personalised services for overcoming challenges such as peaking yields, water stress, degrading soil and lack of infrastructure including temperature-controlled warehouses and refrigerated trucks. Honourable Mr. Modi has also signed agreements with Indian companies and local businesses including Jio Platforms, ITC, ESRI India Technologies, and Patanjali Organic Research Institute. The government has already seeded publicly available data for more than 50 m farmers of the 120 m identified land-holding growers so far. This initiative directs towards the increased deployment of AI and machine learning models and networks in India while ecommerce firms like Amazon will have a crack at the grocery segment.
But why did the government is taking all these initiatives. Well the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that 40% of the food produced in India is wasted annually. It further suggested that this wastage is due to inefficient supply chains and fragmented food systems. All these initiatives are aimed at rectifying all these problems. Soon enough, agritech startups will also want to grab a piece of this.
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