The agriculture industry has begun to leverage innovative technology, which will revolutionize the agriculture field by gaining profit and completing the work in no time.

FREMONT, CA: AgTech can transform farm operations, especially small farm operations. To sustain a world population that is expected to reach 10 billion by the year 2050, the enterprises need to double the world's agricultural production over the next decades. Several global trends are emerging, influencing food security, poverty, and the overall sustainability of food business and agricultural systems and leveraging digital technology, which is usually referred to as AgTech. Here are four AgTech trends to watch for in the coming years.

Blockchain

Even though blockchain technology is related to virtual currencies, the technology has a huge application and has the potential to transform traceability for food. Blockchain minimizes the inefficiencies and fraud,  enhance and improve food safety, farmer pay, and the transaction times. As food safety and authenticity is the first factor, the customers and farmers would focus alike. Blockchain is used to give the people pure and authoritative records on exactly where their food has been and where it comes from. Blockchain technology prevents price extortion and slow payments while eliminating the middleman and lowering transaction fees, which leads to better fairer pricing and helping smallholder farmers attain a more significant part of their crop value.

Drones

The invention of drones is considered to help the agriculture sector in several ways. Drone technology are used throughout the crop cycle for many tasks and operations, such as the following.

 Crop spraying: Drones help to scan the ground, spraying the crop in real-time for even coverage. The result of the spraying mechanism tends to be five times faster with drones than with the traditional machinery.

Planting: The invention of drone technology and robotic planting systems have helped decrease the planting costs by 85 percent. These systems permit shooting seeds and nutrients into the soil, enabling all nutrients necessary for the growing crops.

Health Assessment: By scanning a crop using both visible and near-infrared light, drones help notify the changes in plants by monitoring their health and alerting farmers of disease and helps them take prompt action.

In a nutshell, drones can help maximize the inputs, react faster to threats, save time for crop surveying, real-time mapping, and also aid in offering an estimate of yield.

Machine Learning and Analytics

It's observed that farmers spend lots of money per annum on seeds and fertilizers, but presently they lack reliable information when it comes to deciding which seed to buy and which fertilizer or nutrient will give better yield in a particular region. Artificial intelligence and machine learning play an important role here. Machine learning and analytics are used to get data for trends in every sector, and the agriculture sector is no exception. Machine learning predicts which traits and genes will be the best for the production of crops, giving farmers the best breed for their location and climate. Machine learning techniques use satellite data to differentiate within the crops. The method also provides valuable information for crop insurance, logistics, and commodity markets. The intersection of robotics and data from an increasingly connected farm will accelerate this trend even further. As technology and its innovation increases, it becomes powerful. Machine learning and advanced data analytics enable to process huge amount of data.

Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) proves to be a revolutionizing technology for many sectors, as well as for agriculture. Several remote sensing techniques from in-field sensors to drones to satellite imagery allow farmers to view their crops from different perspectives. With the data networks like 4G, computing, and sensor technology, farmers can now get access to a broad area with field-level detail. Sensors can monitor moisture levels, soil conditions, sunlight, and wind speed along with the other factors, whereas the sensors on animals can track health, fertility, location, and also the progress. The future of agriculture is the connected farm, and new lightweight sensors can provide farmers with far deeper and more accurate insights into every part of their farm operation. 

Agriculture will no longer depend on applying water, fertilizers, and pesticides uniformly across entire fields that were done traditionally with manpower. Instead, farmers will use the minimum quantities required and target specific areas. Future agriculture will use technologies such as machine learning, temperature and moisture sensors, aerial images, and drones. By leveraging these technologies, the agriculture sector can yield more profit, efficient, safe, and environmentally-friendly farms.