Digital Agriculture Services

To make operations across the agriculture value chain more efficient, automated and insights-driven, stakeholders are leveraging a mix of digital technologies and analytics. A lot of digital firms offer these services to help to improve financial performance and boost yield, covering the entire supply chain from farm to the last link in the distribution network. Some of these services include connected farm solutions, remote livestock monitoring, food produce trackers and automated farm equipments.

Digital technologies are helping farmers make efficient use of resources by providing them insights related to using more precise amounts of water, fertilizers and pesticides. Different farm processes such as sowing and harvesting, livestock handling, agronomy, communication and more have deployed digital agriculture solutions to improve farm productivity and increase profit margin.

Agricultural extension, also known as agricultural advisory services, are the services meant to improve productivity, increasing food security, improving livelihoods, and providing better access to information and market prices to smallholder farmers, who remain the bedrock of the agricultural and food supply chains. Many countries are implementing mobile applications to strengthen their agriculture extension services. Andhra Pradesh government’s Ryuth Bharosa Kendram is a fine example of digital agricultural extension service.

With the increasing population, the food production will need to be doubled in a short period of time. To achieve that, the agriculture ecosystem is already witnessing huge investments in digital technologies. Stakeholders and investors are seeking more innovative use cases of digital technologies in the farm and the supply chain which can reduce food loss, increase production and improve overall profit margin. Connected farm solutions, mobile solutions for field agents operations based on digital-driven insights, using drones for farm monitoring and automated machinery for mundane tasks are some examples of how digital technologies are being used innovatively.

Drones have multiple uses for farmers. They can be used to monitor crops and livestock spread over large areas, generate heat maps to indicate soil moisture level, presence of pests and more. They can also be used for precise irrigation and spraying activities, enabling farmers to conduct these operations remotely.

Big data aids in improving decision-making capabilities of farmers and other supply chain stakeholders. The large amount of data generated by a connected agri-ecosystem provides farmers with granular data on rain patterns, water cycles, fertilizer requirements, and more. This enables them to make better and smart decisions, such as which crops they should plant based on the current weather conditions, how much inputs they should use and other important decisions which can help them improve farm yield. The same data, when fed to an AI/ML algorithm can be used for making predictions and helping farmers be ready for any anticipated change.

IoT in agriculture has innumerable applications, ranging from smart farming solutions, data collections, agriculture drones, livestock monitoring, geofencing to smart greenhouses and predictive analytics. IoT in agriculture market size is expected to triple by 2025, reaching $15.3 billion as compared to being slightly over $5 billion back in 2016.

IoT and sensors, drones, mobile applications, data and analytics, AI/ML, blockchain, cloud, AR/VR are some of the new technologies which are increasingly finding applications in the agriculture ecosystem.

Sensors are used to monitor livestock health, agronomic parameters such as soil quality, moisture level and more. But the most important application is in data collection which provides useful insights and serves as a fuel for AI-based algorithms for predictive operations.