Agriculture 4.0 for sustainable farming

December 2, 2022

Productivity is crucial to meet the growing population’s food demand. However, there is a considerable lack in the agricultural sector’s productivity growth, according to the “2021 Global Agricultural Productivity Report.” Total factor productivity (TFP) represents the agricultural output from the combined set of land, labor, capital, and materials used. From 2010 to 2019, the annual TFP growth was at 1.4%, which is significantly below the targeted 1.7%.

However, productivity increases cannot be gained at the cost of livelihoods or adverse environmental impacts. Technologies can assist in balancing productivity, employment, and sustainability. They offer affordable and innovative solutions to improve productivity while mitigating economic and environmental risks.

Agriculture 4.0 is a part of the fourth wave of the industrial revolution (Industry 4.0), which proposes an ideal state of fully autonomous and optimized manufacturing in factories. Autonomous farming is possible through efficient integration of physical and digital technologies, with gradual progression from manual to automatic to semiautonomous to, eventually, fully autonomous operations (see Figure 1 below).

Figure 1. Cloud-managed digital technologies to achieve Agriculture 4.0

Affordable farming

Affordability is a crucial measure for these technologies if they are to be adopted, particularly in developing countries. One approach to enhance affordability is to develop technologies using open-source software, architectures, and frameworks and standardized application programming interfaces (APIs).

Food prices around the world are at a historic high, and as of 2021, an estimated 2.3 billion people are either moderately or severely food insecure. Food security is a complex problem and requires short-, medium- and long-term solutions. We need innovations in the food industry based on sustainable input supplies, local value addition, digitalization and new financing solutions, says UNIDO.

Precision farming technologies

Precision agriculture uses Internet of Things (IoT)-powered smart automation for rapid analytics and to enable precise field management. 5G networks with lower latency and higher bandwidth allow real-time streaming of time series and videos. Fields will be occupied by multiple autonomous farming machines that will each need to be seamlessly connected and controlled for given operations.

Putting drones at the centre of a technology-led transformation of Indian agriculture, with support from emerging business models such as digital financing, precision agriculture and rapid awareness building, can boost GDP by 1%-1.5% and create at least 5,00,000 jobs in the coming years in India, according to World Economic Forum.

Swarm intelligence

Swarm intelligence is the collective and coordinated behavior of many individuals working as one system toward a common objective in a decentralized, self-learning, self-organizing manner. It will optimize, control, and self-heal with AI algorithms on a common network for better utilization and path planning of farming equipment.

Infosys in collaboration with Schmiede.one GmbH & Co and FIR at RWTH Aachen University is pioneering an innovative program “5G.NATURAL” piloting an autonomous swarm of agriculture machinery that will boost cultivation productivity.

Agriculture and GHG emissions

The agriculture sector’s role in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is widely known but not well understood. In truth, more than one-quarter of the world’s GHG emissions come from agriculture, forestry, and land-use change. And unless actively addressed, these emissions are likely to increase as more people populate the Earth and the need for food continues to grow. The first step in reducing emissions from agriculture is to produce food as efficiently as possible—that is, to change how we farm.?A set of proven GHG-efficient farming technologies and practices—some of which are already being deployed—could achieve about 20 percent of the sector’s required emissions reduction by 2050.

Supply chains for farmer access

It’s nearly impossible for agricultural organizations to directly reach the fragmented farmer demographic, especially in emerging markets, relying on a diverse network of small distributors and wholesalers spread across geographies. Several factors, such as the cost to change, contribute to the inertia in the agricultural sector when it comes to revitalizing distribution networks. However, adopting new technology and reimagining the distribution process can unlock significant gains for these companies.?

Open-source software with third-party platforms can create affordable digitization in farming. At the same time, machine, operational, and process data across multiple sources and technology layers should be synthesized and analyzed without compromising the end-user experience. Swarm intelligence will play a key role in promoting autonomous farming. Efficient supply chain management practices will help reduce food waste and encourage responsible food consumption. Regardless of technology’s influence, Agriculture 4.0 requires responsible innovation to drive productivity while ensuring economic, environmental, and social sustainability.

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