Agriculture 4.0 - Data the New Soil

Enabling Smart Farming by Smart Sensing & Monitoring, Smart Analysis & Planning, and Smart Control & Automation

"The Big Data landscape, an enabler of Agriculture 4.0, has three key players, technology companies, agriculture businesses, and farmers. Each one needs to align to realize the true potential of Smart Farming."

As the world impacted by COVID has started realizing the criticality of Food Security the discussion around Agriculture 4.0 has come to the center. A key constituent of Agriculture 4.0 vision of more food per drop, per farmer, per dollar of input cost, and per acre is Smart Farming.

Technology Enabling Agriculture 4.0

Smart Farming emphasizes the use of information technology in a virtual-physical farm/crop management cycle. New Big Data enabled technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML), and Cloud Computing (CC) are expected to leverage this development and introduce more automation and intelligence in agriculture. Most notable amongst the various technology innovation today deployed to agriculture is Big Data. Big Data leverage massive volumes of data with a wide variety that can be captured, analyzed, and used for decision-making.

Big Data at the Center of Agriculture 4.0

Big Data is also the inherent force behind the adoption of other key technologies including IoT, Blockchain, AI & ML, and CC. Big Data is being used to provide predictive insights into the farming and allied operations, drive real-time operational decisions for most stakeholders in the food supply chain, and redesign processes for game-changing business models. Together with other key technologies, Big Data enables all aspects of Smart Farming including Smart Sensing & Monitoring, Smart Analysis & Planning, Smart Control & Automation.

"Big Data will cause major shifts in roles and power relations among different players in the current agriculture ecosystem."

Agriculture 4.0 Ecosystem

Big Data making other Innovations Valuable

Some interesting “Smart Farming" Applications made adoptable by Big Data due to the unlocking of value include:

Smart Sensing & Monitoring

Sensors, GPS units, Remote Sensing (Drones or Satellite-Based), Hyper-Local Weather Stations, and Hand Held Ground-Truthing Tools are being used to capture on a real-time basis detailed information on the condition of both crops and the farms. Enormous data, captured by Smart Sensing and Monitoring tools, is analyzed by Big Data engines to provide actionable insights to multiple stakeholders of the agriculture ecosystem including the farmer.

Examples being optimization of the crop season, elimination of bottlenecks in the market linkages, near real-time intervention in case of crop stress, efficient application of inputs, identification of irrigation needs, prediction of yields, uberization of farm equipment based on usage to name a few.

Smart Analysis & Planning

The contextually collected data from multiple touchpoints including on-farm data as well as off-farm data is made valuable due to advances in Big Data analytics and Artificial Intelligence. Structured, Semi-Structured, and Unstructured data can be used by Big data engines to bring out actionable insights. Big Data tools along with AI algorithms enable all stakeholders to leverage Smart Analysis and Planning seamlessly to make data-driven decisions.

Examples being the use of image processing algorithms to identify needs of a plant or soil, use of Machine Learning tools to extrapolate farm data with supply chain data in order to move products faster from farm to table, reducing the amount of food wasted in transit by better logistic planning using GPS data and smart storage facility data, analytics of historical data to help farmers hedge against potential losses, smooth out cash flow, and determine the best type of crops to be planted.

Smart Control & Automation

Drones, Farm-bots, and Intelligent Sprinklers are all reality now because of the unlocking of precision agriculture value due to the use of Big Data techniques. Smart Control and automation are facilitated immensely by Big Data-enabled contextual insights on a real-time basis.

Examples being the use of drones to spray crop protection and crop nutrient products at the precise area of stress in the crop, using robots for removing weeds using lasers and automated weeders, farm-bots for seeding and transplanting based on precise GPS coordinates, intelligent integrated irrigation to provide more food per drop of water and autonomous navigation systems that could guide the use of heavy machinery such as self-driving tractors and harvesters to name a few.

The possibilities made available by Big Data seem both endless and highly beneficial to farmers, ecosystem participants, and consumers alike.

While getting there is taking a little longer than optimistic projections expected, all of these changes are already happening and eventually will lead to a smarter, more efficient agricultural industry.

About Author

Deepak Pareek, Managing Partner – HnyB

Deepak is a well-decorated technocrat honored as Top 10 Agropreneur 2019 by Future Agro Challenge and Technology Pioneer 2018 by World Economic Forum. Deepak, a serial entrepreneur having founded path-breaking companies including HnyB, MyCrop, DigiAgri, and AgriChain, is creating an ecosystem to deploy cutting-edge technologies including Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine-Learning, Blockchain, GeoSpatial, Computer-Vision, Drones and IoT.