Agriculture, Development Conversations, Economies and Innovation, Environment and Sustainable Development

Canaan Bridges Consulting Inc.

Farming practices, environmental conditions, local and global economic frameworks, culture and political dynamics all impact agricultural output and our access to food. This article examines the benefits of precision agriculture for small-scale farmers.

Precision agriculture (Ag Tech) uses technology to manage agricultural production. It’s different from traditional farming practices, which are more labour-intensive. Precision agriculture involves using technology to optimize a farmer’s resources, thereby maximizing crop yield and production growth. These modes of agricultural management often use geospatial technologies to boost productivity. They include drones, remote sensors, geographic information systems (GIS), and geographic positioning systems (GPS). By 2027 the market value of precision agriculture is forecast to be worth almost USD 49 billion.

How Ag Tech Works

With precision agriculture, farmers can utilize land (in the case of crop farming) and resources more efficiently, focusing their efforts on achieving better outcomes. The goal of precision farming is to reduce costs and increase production.

Examples:

1. Drones may be dispatched over arable land to find poorly irrigated areas. The system sends crop data back to farmers for analysis and evaluation.

2. Agricultural sensors collect and send soil moisture, temperature, and humidity information to farmers.

3. The use of autonomous vehicles to spray fertilizers and fungicides on unwanted weeds.  Artificial intelligence and machine learning devices may enable these autonomous vehicles to quickly identify and differentiate between weeds and actual crops, allowing them to spray large areas.

4. The deployment of precision technology to livestock farming. This may help farmers to monitor cows’ activities, behaviours, and milking patterns as a means of detecting diseases early.

Mainstreaming Ag Tech among Small Farmers

Ag Tech will only benefit small-acreage and low-revenue farmers if they have the expertise to understand how the technology works and how to adapt it to their farms. The use of these advanced farming technologies generates a lot of raw data. These extracted data are likely of little use in making decisions about farm productivity if they cannot be tabulated, analyzed, or applied correctly.

Making sure farmers know how to set up the technology and handle the data is essential. In economies where agriculture is a significant contributor to gross domestic product, local agencies may find it worthwhile to:

  • Invest in training farmers in new technologies, especially if they yield positive returns. This is done in India, where its government has developed precision farming development centres to create, share knowledge about the technologies and advocate for their sustainable use.
  • Provide ag-tech skill development and training in secondary schools and tertiary agricultural colleges. This helps to equip next-generation farmers with skills and knowledge to tackle the pros and cons of integrating ag-tech on farms.
  • Small farmers often lack access to financial resources, technical assistance, and continuous support to effectively participate in new initiatives. To achieve the best results from ag-tech, the deployment of appropriate human and financial resources is required. Offering financing on flexible terms and methods (micro-financing) to small farmers may support farmers’ interest and use of ag-tech resources.

Other Factors: Acquisition and Sustained use of farming technology

Ag tech is a capital-intensive sector – money and infrastructural developments are essential to build and leverage its connection with farms. There is a higher adoption of precision agriculture in North America and Europe than in small developing states. Several developing countries use the technology, but resource constraints and interoperability issues impact their sustainable use. Ag tech systems often rely on the Internet of Things (IoT) tools to collect and transmit data between integrated networks. Low or non-existent internet connectivity in rural areas challenges this adoption.  In addition, mountainous or forested regions can challenge GPS reception, affecting farmers’ ability to gather and monitor soil or crop conditions effectively.

Big data storage is a concern in every sector, and precision agriculture will be no different. If farm technology use is to become a sustained practice, small acreage and low-revenue farmers will have to find the means to include securitization of big data as an everyday concern of their operations. Financial and interoperability concerns are a challenge to this goal.

The age of farmers, socio-cultural dynamics, and their location can influence the decision to use precision agri-technologies. The fact that some younger and older farmers have little interest in the technology suggests that traditional farming methods remain relevant on farms and are preferred by many.

The Future

Farmers’ adoption of precision agriculture is not mainstream, but this is likely to change. The capacity of small farmers to utilize technology to enhance their farming practices depends on several factors. Overall, it is clear that agricultural sectors can benefit from strategic public-private partnerships, enabling small farmers to learn about precision agriculture, access appropriate resources if they decide to adopt it, and use it sustainably.

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