essay about science and technology in agriculture

Essay on Impact Of Technology On Agriculture

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100 Words Essay on Impact Of Technology On Agriculture

Improving crop growth.

Technology helps farmers grow more food. Machines like tractors make preparing soil easy. Seeds are planted quickly with special tools. There are even computers that tell farmers the best time to plant. This means more crops can grow and people have plenty of food.

Protecting Plants from Pests

Pests can destroy crops, but technology fights them. There are apps that can spot harmful bugs. Farmers use this information to protect plants. They only spray chemicals where needed, which is safer for the environment.

Keeping Track of Farms

Drones fly over fields and take pictures. These images show which parts of the farm need more water or fertilizer. This helps farmers take care of their crops better and saves them time and money.

Climate and Weather

Technology predicts the weather accurately. Farmers know when it will rain or be too hot. They can plan when to water the plants or when to harvest. This way, bad weather does less harm to the crops.

Storing Food Properly

250 words essay on impact of technology on agriculture, technology makes farming easier.

Long ago, farmers had to work the land with their hands and simple tools. Now, machines do many tasks, making work faster and less tiring. Tractors plow fields in a day, which once took weeks. Machines also plant seeds and harvest crops. This means farmers can grow more food with less effort.

Better Crop Care with Technology

Technology helps farmers take care of plants better. There are special sensors that tell farmers how much water each plant needs. This way, not a single drop is wasted. Drones fly over fields to spot sick plants. Then, farmers can make them healthy before it’s too late. This helps to make sure more plants grow well and are ready to eat.

Keeping Track with Computers

Farmers use computers to keep an eye on their farms. They can see how much food they grow and how their animals are doing. Computers help them make smart choices. For example, they can find out the best time to sell their crops or when to buy new seeds.

Staying Safe from Bad Weather

Bad weather can destroy crops. But now, with new technology, farmers can be ready. They get weather reports on their phones and can protect their plants before storms hit. Some even use big covers to shield their crops from too much sun or rain.

In conclusion, technology has changed farming a lot. It makes growing food easier, helps farmers take better care of their plants, keeps track of farm details, and protects crops from bad weather. All this means we have more food on our tables every day.

500 Words Essay on Impact Of Technology On Agriculture

Introduction to technology in farming, better farming tools and machines.

One big change technology has brought to farming is better tools and machines. Before, farmers had to do a lot of hard work with their hands or use animals to help them. Now, there are machines like tractors, planters, and harvesters. These machines can do the work faster and save a lot of time. They can also be very precise, which means they make fewer mistakes, like planting seeds at the perfect depth in the soil.

Keeping Plants Healthy

Technology also helps farmers keep their plants healthy. There are special computers and apps that tell farmers when to water their plants or if a plant is sick. This is great because it means farmers can use less water and fewer chemicals, which is better for the earth. Drones, which are like small flying robots, can fly over fields and take pictures so farmers can see if all the plants are healthy or if some parts of the field need more care.

Understanding the Weather

Helping animals.

Farms that have animals also use technology. There are special collars for cows that can track where they go and how much they eat. This helps the farmer know if the cow is healthy. There are also machines that can help milk cows. This is good for the farmer because it saves time, and it’s good for the cows because the machines are gentle and keep everything clean.

Storing and Moving Food

After the food is grown, technology helps keep it fresh and gets it to the stores where we buy it. There are big refrigerators that can keep fruits and vegetables cold so they don’t spoil. There are also trucks and ships with special coolers that can move food from the farm to the store without it going bad.

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Impact of Technology on Agriculture

Technological innovations have greatly shaped agriculture throughout time. From the creation of the plow to the global positioning system (GPS) driven precision farming equipment, humans have developed new ways to make farming more efficient and grow more food. We are constantly working to find new ways to irrigate crops or breed more disease resistant varieties. These iterations are key to feeding the ever-expanding global population with the decreasing freshwater supply.

Explore developments in agricultural technology and its impacts on civilization with this curated collection of classroom resources.

Earth Science, Geography

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• Published: 27 April 2017

Technology: The Future of Agriculture

• Anthony King  

Nature volume  544 ,  pages S21–S23 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

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A technological revolution in farming led by advances in robotics and sensing technologies looks set to disrupt modern practice.

Over the centuries, as farmers have adopted more technology in their pursuit of greater yields, the belief that 'bigger is better' has come to dominate farming, rendering small-scale operations impractical. But advances in robotics and sensing technologies are threatening to disrupt today's agribusiness model. “There is the potential for intelligent robots to change the economic model of farming so that it becomes feasible to be a small producer again,” says robotics engineer George Kantor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Twenty-first century robotics and sensing technologies have the potential to solve problems as old as farming itself. “I believe, by moving to a robotic agricultural system, we can make crop production significantly more efficient and more sustainable,” says Simon Blackmore, an engineer at Harper Adams University in Newport, UK. In greenhouses devoted to fruit and vegetable production, engineers are exploring automation as a way to reduce costs and boost quality (see ‘ Ripe for the picking ’). Devices to monitor vegetable growth, as well as robotic pickers, are currently being tested. For livestock farmers, sensing technologies can help to manage the health and welfare of their animals (‘ Animal trackers ’). And work is underway to improve monitoring and maintenance of soil quality (‘ Silicon soil saviours ’), and to eliminate pests and disease without resorting to indiscriminate use of agrichemicals (‘ Eliminating enemies ’).

Although some of these technologies are already available, most are at the research stage in labs and spin-off companies. “Big-machinery manufacturers are not putting their money into manufacturing agricultural robots because it goes against their current business models,” says Blackmore. Researchers such as Blackmore and Kantor are part of a growing body of scientists with plans to revolutionize agricultural practice. If they succeed, they'll change how we produce food forever. “We can use technology to double food production,” says Richard Green, agricultural engineer at Harper Adams.

Ripe for the picking

The Netherlands is famed for the efficiency of its fruit- and vegetable-growing greenhouses, but these operations rely on people to pick the produce. “Humans are still better than robots, but there is a lot of effort going into automatic harvesting,” says Eldert van Henten, an agricultural engineer at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, who is working on a sweet-pepper harvester. The challenge is to quickly and precisely identify the pepper and avoid cutting the main stem of the plant. The key lies in fast, precise software. “We are performing deep learning with the machine so it can interpret all the data from a colour camera fast,” says van Henten. “We even feed data from regular street scenes into the neural network to better train it.”

In the United Kingdom, Green has developed a strawberry harvester that he says can pick the fruit faster than humans. It relies on stereoscopic vision with RGB cameras to capture depth, but it is its powerful algorithms that allow it to pick a strawberry every two seconds. People can pick 15 to 20 a minute, Green estimates. “Our partners at the National Physical Laboratory worked on the problem for two years, but had a brainstorm one day and finally cracked it,” says Green, adding that the solution is too commercially sensitive to share. He thinks that supervised groups of robots can step into the shoes of strawberry pickers in around five years. Harper Adams University is considering setting up a spin-off company to commercialize the technology. The big hurdle to commercialization, however, is that food producers demand robots that can pick all kinds of vegetables, says van Henten. The variety of shapes, sizes and colours of tomatoes, for instance, makes picking them a tough challenge, although there is already a robot available to remove unwanted leaves from the plants.

Another key place to look for efficiencies is timing. Picking too early is wasteful because you miss out on growth, but picking too late slashes weeks off the storage time. Precision-farming engineer Manuela Zude-Sasse at the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy in Potsdam, Germany, is attaching sensors to apples to detect their size, and levels of the pigments chlorophyll and anthocyanin. The data are fed into an algorithm to calculate developmental stage, and, when the time is ripe for picking, growers are alerted by smartphone.

So far, Zude-Sasse has put sensors on pears, citrus fruits, peaches, bananas and apples ( pictured ). She is set to start field trials later this year in a commercial tomato greenhouse and an apple orchard. She is also developing a smartphone app for cherry growers. The app will use photographs of cherries taken by growers to calculate growth rate and a quality score.

Growing fresh fruit and vegetables is all about keeping the quality high while minimizing costs. “If you can schedule harvest to optimum fruit development, then you can reap an economic benefit and a quality one,” says Zude-Sasse.

Eliminating enemies

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that 20–40% of global crop yields are lost each year to pests and diseases, despite the application of around two-million tonnes of pesticide. Intelligent devices, such as robots and drones, could allow farmers to slash agrichemical use by spotting crop enemies earlier to allow precise chemical application or pest removal, for example. “The market is demanding foods with less herbicide and pesticide, and with greater quality,” says Red Whittaker, a robotics engineer at Carnegie Mellon who designed and patented an automated guidance system for tractors in 1997. “That challenge can be met by robots.”

“We predict drones, mounted with RGB or multispectral cameras, will take off every morning before the farmer gets up, and identify where within the field there is a pest or a problem,” says Green. As well as visible light, these cameras would be able to collect data from the invisible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that could allow farmers to pinpoint a fungal disease, for example, before it becomes established. Scientists from Carnegie Mellon have begun to test the theory in sorghum ( Sorghum bicolor ), a staple in many parts of Africa and a potential biofuel crop in the United States.

Agribotix, an agriculture data-analysis company in Boulder, Colorado, supplies drones and software that use near-infrared images to map patches of unhealthy vegetation in large fields. Images can also reveal potential causes, such as pests or problems with irrigation. The company processes drone data from crop fields in more than 50 countries. It is now using machine learning to train its systems to differentiate between crops and weeds, and hopes to have this capability ready for the 2017 growing season. “We will be able to ping growers with an alert saying you have weeds growing in your field, here and here,” says crop scientist Jason Barton, an executive at Agribotix.

Modern technology that can autonomously eliminate pests and target agrichemicals better will reduce collateral damage to wildlife, lower resistance and cut costs. “We are working with a pesticide company keen to apply from the air using a drone,” says Green. Rather than spraying a whole field, the pesticide could be delivered to the right spot in the quantity needed, he says. The potential reductions in pesticide use are impressive. According to researchers at the University of Sydney's Australian Centre for Field Robotics, targeted spraying of vegetables used 0.1% of the volume of herbicide used in conventional blanket spraying. Their prototype robot is called RIPPA (Robot for Intelligent Perception and Precision Application) and shoots weeds with a directed micro-dose of liquid. Scientists at Harper Adams are going even further, testing a robot that does away with chemicals altogether by blasting weeds close to crops with a laser. “Cameras identify the growing point of the weed and our laser, which is no more than a concentrated heat source, heats it up to 95 °C, so the weed either dies or goes dormant,” says Blackmore.

Animal trackers

Smart collars — a bit like the wearable devices designed to track human health and fitness — have been used to monitor cows in Scotland since 2010. Developed by Glasgow start-up Silent Herdsman, the collar monitors fertility by tracking activity — cows move around more when they are fertile — and uses this to alert farmers to when a cow is ready to mate, sending a message to his or her laptop or smartphone. The collars ( pictured ), which are now being developed by Israeli dairy-farm-technology company Afimilk after they acquired Silent Herdsman last year, also detect early signs of illness by monitoring the average time each cow spends eating and ruminating, and warning the farmer via a smartphone if either declines.

“We are now looking at more subtle behavioural changes and how they might be related to animal health, such as lameness or acidosis,” says Richard Dewhurst, an animal nutritionist at Scotland's Rural College (SRUC) in Edinburgh, who is involved in research to expand the capabilities of the collar. Scientists are developing algorithms to interrogate data collected by the collars.

In a separate project, Dewhurst is analysing levels of exhaled ketones and sulfides in cow breath to reveal underfeeding and tissue breakdown or excess protein in their diet. “We have used selected-ionflow-tube mass spectrometry, but there are commercial sensors available,” says Dewhurst.

Cameras are also improving the detection of threats to cow health. The inflammatory condition mastitis — often the result of a bacterial infection — is one of the biggest costs to the dairy industry, causing declines in milk production or even death. Thermal-imaging cameras installed in cow sheds can spot hot, inflamed udders, allowing animals to be treated early.

Carol-Anne Duthie, an animal scientist at SRUC, is using 3D cameras to film cattle at water troughs to estimate the carcass grade (an assessment of the quality of a culled cow) and animal weight. These criteria determine the price producers are paid. Knowing the optimum time to sell would maximize profit and provide abattoirs with more-consistent animals. “This has knock on effects in terms of overall efficiency of the entire supply chain, reducing the animals which are out of specification reaching the abattoir,” Duthie explains.

And researchers in Belgium have developed a camera system to monitor broiler chickens in sheds. Three cameras continually track the movements of thousands of individual birds to spot problems quickly. “Analysing the behaviour of broilers can give an early warning for over 90% of problems,” says bioengineer Daniel Berckmans at the University of Leuven. The behaviour-monitoring system is being sold by Fancom, a livestock-husbandry firm in Panningen, the Netherlands. The Leuven researchers have also launched a cough monitor to flag respiratory problems in pigs, through a spin-off company called SoundTalks. This can give a warning 12 days earlier than farmers or vets would normally be able to detect a problem, says Berckmans. The microphone, which is positioned above animals in their pen, identifies sick individuals so that treatment can be targeted. “The idea was to reduce the use of antibiotics,” says Berckmans.

Berckmans is now working on downsizing a stress monitor designed for people so that it will attach to a cow's ear tag. “The more you stress an animal, the less energy is available from food for growth,” he says. The monitor takes 200 physiological measurements a second, alerting farmers through a smartphone when there is a problem.

Silicon soil saviours

The richest resource for arable farmers is soil. But large harvesters damage and compact soil, and overuse of agrichemicals such as nitrogen fertilizer are bad for both the environment and a farmer's bottom line. Robotics and autonomous machines could help.

Data from drones are being used for smarter application of nitrogen fertilizer. “Healthy vegetation reflects more near-infrared light than unhealthy vegetation,” explains Barton. The ratio of red to near-infrared bands on a multispectral image can be used to estimate chlorophyll concentration and, therefore, to map biomass and see where interventions such as fertilization are needed after weather or pest damage, for example. When French agricultural technology company Airinov, which offers this type of drone survey, partnered with a French farming cooperative, they found that over a period of 3 years, in 627 fields of oilseed rape ( Brassica napus ), farmers used on average 34 kilograms less nitrogen fertilizer per hectare than they would without the survey data. This saved on average €107 (US$115) per hectare per year.

Bonirob ( pictured ) — a car-sized robot originally developed by a team of scientists including those at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences in Germany — can measure other indicators of soil quality using various sensors and modules, including a moisture sensor and a penetrometer, which is used to assess soil compaction. According to Arno Ruckelshausen, an agricultural technologist at Osnabrück, Bonirob can take a sample of soil, liquidize it and analyse it to precisely map in real time characteristics such as pH and phosphorous levels. The University of Sydney's smaller RIPPA robot can also detect soil characteristics that affect crop production, by measuring soil conductivity.

Soil mapping opens the door to sowing different crop varieties in one field to better match shifting soil properties such as water availability. “You could differentially seed a field, for example, planting deep-rooting barley or wheat varieties in more sandy parts,” says Maurice Moloney, chief executive of the Global Institute for Food Security in Saskatoon, Canada. Growing multiple crops together could also lead to smarter use of agrichemicals. “Nature is strongly against monoculture, which is one reason we have to use massive amounts of herbicide and pesticides,” says van Henten. “It is about making the best use of resources.”

Mixed sowing would challenge an accepted pillar of agricultural wisdom: that economies of scale and the bulkiness of farm machinery mean vast fields of a single crop is the most-efficient way to farm, and the bigger the machine, the more-efficient the process. Some of the heaviest harvesters weigh 60 tonnes, cost more than a top-end sports car and leave a trail of soil compaction in their wake that can last for years.

But if there is no need for the farmer to drive the machine, then one large vehicle that covers as much area as possible is no longer needed. “As soon as you remove the human component, size is irrelevant,” says van Henten. Small, autonomous robots make mixed planting feasible and would not crush the soil.

In April, researchers at Harpers Adams began a proof-of-concept experiment with a hectare of barley. “We plan to grow and harvest the entire crop from start to finish with no humans entering the field,” says Green. The experiment will use existing machinery, such as tractors, that have been made autonomous, rather than new robots, but their goal is to use the software developed during this trial as the brains of purpose-built robots in the future. “Robots can facilitate a new way of doing agriculture,” says van Henten. Many of these disruptive technologies may not be ready for the prime time just yet, but the revolution is coming.

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King, A. Technology: The Future of Agriculture. Nature 544 , S21–S23 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/544S21a

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Agriculture’s connected future: How technology can yield new growth

The agriculture industry has radically transformed over the past 50 years. Advances in machinery have expanded the scale, speed, and productivity of farm equipment, leading to more efficient cultivation of more land. Seed, irrigation, and fertilizers also have vastly improved, helping farmers increase yields. Now, agriculture is in the early days of yet another revolution, at the heart of which lie data and connectivity. Artificial intelligence, analytics, connected sensors, and other emerging technologies could further increase yields, improve the efficiency of water and other inputs, and build sustainability and resilience across crop cultivation and animal husbandry.

The future of connectivity

As the world experiences a quantum leap in the speed and scope of digital connections, industries are gaining new and enhanced tools to boost productivity and spur innovation. Over the next decade, existing technologies like fiber, low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN), Wi-Fi 6, low- to mid-band 5G, and short-range connections like radio-frequency identification (RFID) will expand their reach as networks are built out and adoption grows. At the same time, new generations of these technologies will appear, with upgraded standards. In addition, new types of more revolutionary—and more capital-intensive—frontier connectivity, like high-band 5G and low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites, will begin to come online.

Together, these technological developments will unlock powerful new capabilities across industries. Near-global coverage will allow the expansion of use cases even to remote areas and will enable constant connectivity universally. Massive use of Internet of Things (IoT) applications and use cases will be enabled as new technologies allow very high device densities. And mission-critical services will take advantage of ultralow-latency, high-reliability, and high-security connections.

Without a solid connectivity infrastructure, however, none of this is possible. If connectivity is implemented successfully in agriculture, the industry could tack on $500 billion in additional value to the global gross domestic product by 2030, according to our research. This would amount to a 7 to 9 percent improvement from its expected total and would alleviate much of the present pressure on farmers. It is one of just seven sectors that, fueled by advanced connectivity, will contribute $2 trillion to $3 trillion in additional value to global GDP over the next decade, according to research by the McKinsey Center for Advanced Connectivity  and the McKinsey Global Institute  (MGI) (see sidebar “The future of connectivity”).

Demand for food is growing at the same time the supply side faces constraints in land and farming inputs. The world’s population is on track to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, 1 The World Population Prospects: 2015 Revision, United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2015. requiring a corresponding 70 percent increase in calories available for consumption, even as the cost of the inputs needed to generate those calories is rising. 2 World Resources Report: Creating a Sustainable Food Future, United Nations, World Resources Institute, and the World Bank, 2013. By 2030, the water supply will fall 40 percent short of meeting global water needs, 3 World Could Face Water Availability Shortfall by 2030 if Current Trends Continue, Secretary-General Warns at Meeting of High-Level Panel, United Nations, 2016. and rising energy, labor, and nutrient costs are already pressuring profit margins. About one-quarter of arable land is degraded and needs significant restoration before it can again sustain crops at scale. 4 The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture: Managing systems at risk, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Earthscan, 2011. And then there are increasing environmental pressures, such as climate change and the economic impact of catastrophic weather events, and social pressures, including the push for more ethical and sustainable farm practices, such as higher standards for farm-animal welfare and reduced use of chemicals and water.

To address these forces poised to further roil the industry, agriculture must embrace a digital transformation enabled by connectivity. Yet agriculture remains less digitized compared with many other industries globally. Past advances were mostly mechanical, in the form of more powerful and efficient machinery, and genetic, in the form of more productive seed and fertilizers. Now much more sophisticated, digital tools are needed to deliver the next productivity leap. Some already exist to help farmers more efficiently and sustainably use resources, while more advanced ones are in development. These new technologies can upgrade decision making, allowing better risk and variability management to optimize yields and improve economics. Deployed in animal husbandry, they can enhance the well-being of livestock, addressing the growing concerns over animal welfare.

Demand for food is growing at the same time the supply side faces constraints in land and farming inputs.

But the industry confronts two significant obstacles. Some regions lack the necessary connectivity infrastructure, making development of it paramount. In regions that already have a connectivity infrastructure, farms have been slow to deploy digital tools because their impact has not been sufficiently proven.

The COVID-19 crisis has further intensified other challenges agriculture faces in five areas: efficiency, resilience, digitization, agility, and sustainability. Lower sales volumes have pressured margins, exacerbating the need for farmers to contain costs further. Gridlocked global supply chains have highlighted the importance of having more local providers, which could increase the resilience of smaller farms. In this global pandemic, heavy reliance on manual labor has further affected farms whose workforces face mobility restrictions. Additionally, significant environmental benefits from decreased travel and consumption during the crisis are likely to drive a desire for more local, sustainable sourcing, requiring producers to adjust long-standing practices. In short, the crisis has accentuated the necessity of more widespread digitization and automation, while suddenly shifting demand and sales channels have underscored the value of agile adaptation.

Current connectivity in agriculture

In recent years, many farmers have begun to consult data about essential variables like soil, crops, livestock, and weather. Yet few if any have had access to advanced digital tools that would help to turn these data into valuable, actionable insights. In less-developed regions, almost all farmwork is manual, involving little or no advanced connectivity or equipment.

Even in the United States, a pioneer country in connectivity, only about one-quarter of farms currently use any connected equipment or devices to access data, and that technology isn’t exactly state-of-the-art, running on 2G or 3G networks that telcos plan to dismantle or on very low-band IoT networks that are complicated and expensive to set up. In either case, those networks can support only a limited number of devices and lack the performance for real-time data transfer, which is essential to unlock the value of more advanced and complex use cases.

Nonetheless, current IoT technologies running on 3G and 4G cellular networks are in many cases sufficient to enable simpler use cases, such as advanced monitoring of crops and livestock. In the past, however, the cost of hardware was high, so the business case for implementing IoT in farming did not hold up. Today, device and hardware costs are dropping rapidly, and several providers now offer solutions at a price we believe will deliver a return in the first year of investment.

These simpler tools are not enough, though, to unlock all the potential value that connectivity holds for agriculture. To attain that, the industry must make full use of digital applications and analytics, which will require low latency, high bandwidth, high resiliency, and support for a density of devices offered by advanced and frontier connectivity technologies like LPWAN, 5G, and LEO satellites (Exhibit 1).

The challenge the industry is facing is thus twofold: infrastructure must be developed to enable the use of connectivity in farming, and where connectivity already exists, strong business cases must be made in order for solutions to be adopted. The good news is that connectivity coverage is increasing almost everywhere. By 2030, we expect advanced connectivity infrastructure of some type to cover roughly 80 percent of the world’s rural areas; the notable exception is Africa, where only a quarter of its area will be covered. The key, then, is to develop more—and more effective—digital tools for the industry and to foster widespread adoption of them.

As connectivity increasingly takes hold, these tools will enable new capabilities in agriculture:

• Massive Internet of Things. Low-power networks and cheaper sensors will set the stage for the IoT to scale up, enabling such use cases as precision irrigation of field crops, monitoring of large herds of livestock, and tracking of the use and performance of remote buildings and large fleets of machinery.
• Mission-critical services. Ultralow latency and improved stability of connections will foster confidence to run applications that demand absolute reliability and responsiveness, such as operating autonomous machinery and drones.
• Near-global coverage. If LEO satellites attain their potential, they will enable even the most remote rural areas of the world to use extensive digitization, which will enhance global farming productivity.

Connectivity’s potential for value creation

By the end of the decade, enhanced connectivity in agriculture could add more than $500 billion to global gross domestic product, a critical productivity improvement of 7 to 9 percent for the industry. 5 This represents our estimate of the total potential for value added in agricultural production; it is not an estimate of the agritech and precision-agriculture market size. Much of that value, however, will require investments in connectivity that today are largely absent from agriculture. Other industries already use technologies like LPWAN, cloud computing, and cheaper, better sensors requiring minimal hardware, which can significantly reduce the necessary investment. We have analyzed five use cases—crop monitoring, livestock monitoring, building and equipment management, drone farming, and autonomous farming machinery—where enhanced connectivity is already in the early stages of being used and is most likely to deliver the higher yields, lower costs, and greater resilience and sustainability that the industry needs to thrive in the 21st century (Exhibit 2).

It’s important to note that use cases do not apply equally across regions. For example, in North America, where yields are already fairly optimized, monitoring solutions do not have the same potential for value creation as in Asia or Africa, where there is much more room to improve productivity. Drones and autonomous machinery will deliver more impact to advanced markets, as technology will likely be more readily available there (Exhibit 3).

About the use-case research

The value of our agriculture-connectivity use cases resides primarily in labor efficiencies, input optimization, yield increases, reduced overhead, and improvements in operation and maintenance of machinery. Each use case enables a series of improvement levers in those areas that promise to enhance the productivity of farming (exhibit).

We applied those levers to the profitability drivers of agricultural production to derive an economic potential for the industry as a whole. For example, a use case might enable a 5 to 10 percent reduction in fertilizer usage, saving costs for the farmer, or enable 3 percent higher yields, leading to greater revenues for the farmer. In fact, higher yields represent the largest opportunity, with advanced connectivity potentially adding some $350 billion of value to global food production without additional inputs or labor costs.

Potential value initially will accrue to large farms that have more investing power and better incentives to digitize. Connectivity promises easier surveying of large tracts, and the fixed costs of developing IoT solutions are more easily offset in large production facilities than on small family farms. Crops like cereals, grains, fruits, and vegetables will generate most of the value we identified, for similar reasons. Connectivity enables more use cases in these sectors than in meat and dairy, because of the large average size of farms, relatively higher player consolidation, and better applicability of connected technologies, as IoT networks are especially adapted to static monitoring of many variables. It’s also interesting to note that Asia should garner about 60 percent of the total value simply because it produces the biggest volume of crops (see sidebar “About the use-case research”).

Use case 1: Crop monitoring

Connectivity offers a variety of ways to improve the observation and care of crops. Integrating weather data, irrigation, nutrient, and other systems could improve resource use and boost yields by more accurately identifying and predicting deficiencies. For instance, sensors deployed to monitor soil conditions could communicate via LPWAN, directing sprinklers to adjust water and nutrient application. Sensors could also deliver imagery from remote corners of fields to assist farmers in making more informed and timely decisions and getting early warnings of problems like disease or pests.

Smart monitoring could also help farmers optimize the harvesting window. Monitoring crops for quality characteristics—say, sugar content and fruit color—could help farmers maximize the revenue from their crops.

Most IoT networks today cannot support imagery transfer between devices, let alone autonomous imagery analysis, nor can they support high enough device numbers and density to monitor large fields accurately. Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) and 5G promise to solve these bandwidth and connection-density issues. The use of more and smoother connections between soil, farm equipment, and farm managers could unlock $130 billion to $175 billion in value by 2030.

Use case 2: Livestock monitoring

Preventing disease outbreaks and spotting animals in distress are critical in large-scale livestock management, where most animals are raised in close quarters on a regimen that ensures they move easily through a highly automated processing system. Chips and body sensors that measure temperature, pulse, and blood pressure, among other indicators, could detect illnesses early, preventing herd infection and improving food quality. Farmers are already using ear-tag technology from providers such as Smartbow (part of Zoetis) to monitor cows’ heat, health, and location, or technology from companies such as Allflex to implement comprehensive electronic tracing in case of disease outbreaks.

Similarly, environmental sensors could trigger automatic adjustments in ventilation or heating in barns, lessening distress and improving living conditions that increasingly concern consumers. Better monitoring of animal health and growth conditions could produce $70 billion to $90 billion in value by 2030.

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Use case 3: building and equipment management.

Chips and sensors to monitor and measure levels of silos and warehouses could trigger automated reordering, reducing inventory costs for farmers, many of whom are already using such systems from companies like Blue Level Technologies. Similar tools could also improve shelf life of inputs and reduce post-harvest losses by monitoring and automatically optimizing storage conditions. Monitoring conditions and usage of buildings and equipment also has the potential to reduce energy consumption. Computer vision and sensors attached to equipment and connected to predictive-maintenance systems could decrease repair costs and extend machinery and equipment life.

Such solutions could achieve $40 billion to $60 billion in cost savings by 2030.

Use case 4: Farming by drone

Agriculture has been using drones for some two decades, with farmers around the world relying on pioneers like Yamaha’s RMAX remote-controlled helicopter to help with crop spraying. Now the next generation of drones is starting to impact the sector, with the ability to survey crops and herds over vast areas quickly and efficiently or as a relay system for ferrying real-time data to other connected equipment and installations. Drones also could use computer vision to analyze field conditions and deliver precise interventions like fertilizers, nutrients, and pesticides where crops most need them. Or they could plant seed in remote locations, lowering equipment and workforce costs. By reducing costs and improving yields, the use of drones could generate between $85 billion and $115 billion in value.

Use case 5: Autonomous farming machinery

More precise GPS controls paired with computer vision and sensors could advance the deployment of smart and autonomous farm machinery. Farmers could operate a variety of equipment on their field simultaneously and without human intervention, freeing up time and other resources. Autonomous machines are also more efficient and precise at working a field than human-operated ones, which could generate fuel savings and higher yields. Increasing the autonomy of machinery through better connectivity could create $50 billion to $60 billion of additional value by 2030.

Additional sources of value

Connected technologies offer an additional, indirect benefit, the value of which is not included in the estimates given in these use cases. The global farming industry is highly fragmented, with most labor done by individual farm owners. Particularly in Asia and Africa, few farms employ outside workers. On such farms, the adoption of connectivity solutions should free significant time for farmers, which they can use to farm additional land for pay or to pursue work outside the industry.

We find the value of deploying advanced connectivity on these farms to achieve such labor efficiencies represents almost $120 billion, bringing the total value of enhanced connectivity from direct and indirect outcomes to more than $620 billion by 2030. The extent to which this value will be captured, however, relies largely on advanced connectivity coverage, which is expected to be fairly low, around 25 percent, in Africa and poorer parts of Asia and Latin America. Achieving the critical mass of adopters needed to make a business case for deploying advanced connectivity also will be more difficult in those regions, where farming is more fragmented than in North America and Europe.

Connected world: An evolution in connectivity beyond the 5G revolution

Implications for the agricultural ecosystem.

As the agriculture industry digitizes, new pockets of value will likely be unlocked. To date, input providers selling seed, nutrients, pesticides, and equipment have played a critical role in the data ecosystem because of their close ties with farmers, their own knowledge of agronomy, and their track record of innovation. For example, one of the world’s largest fertilizer distributors now offers both fertilizing agents and software that analyzes field data to help farmers determine where to apply their fertilizers and in what quantity. Similarly, a large-equipment manufacturer is developing precision controls that make use of satellite imagery and vehicle-to-vehicle connections to improve the efficiency of field equipment.

Advanced connectivity does, however, give new players an opportunity to enter the space. For one thing, telcos and LPWAN providers have an essential role to play in installing the connectivity infrastructure needed to enable digital applications on farms. They could partner with public authorities and other agriculture players to develop public or private rural networks, capturing some of the new value in the process.

Agritech companies are another example of the new players coming into the agriculture sphere. They specialize in offering farmers innovative products that make use of technology and data to improve decision making and thereby increase yields and profits. Such agritech enterprises could proffer solutions and pricing models that reduce perceived risk for farmers—with, for example, subscription models that remove the initial investment burden and allow farmers to opt out at any time—likely leading to faster adoption of their products. An Italian agritech is doing this by offering to monitor irrigation and crop protection for wineries at a seasonal, per-acre fee inclusive of hardware installation, data collection and analysis, and decision support. Agritech also could partner with agribusinesses to develop solutions.

Still, much of this cannot happen until many rural areas get access to a high-speed broadband network. We envision three principal ways the necessary investment could take place to make this a reality:

• Telco-driven deployment. Though the economics of high-bandwidth rural networks have generally been poor, telcos could benefit from a sharp increase in rural demand for their bandwidth as farmers embrace advanced applications and integrated solutions.
• Provider-driven deployment. Input providers, with their existing industry knowledge and relationships, are probably best positioned to take the lead in connectivity-related investment. They could partner with telcos or LPWAN businesses to develop rural connectivity networks and then offer farmers business models integrating connected technology and product and decision support.
• Farmer-driven deployment. Farm owners, alone or in tandem with LPWAN groups or telcos, could also drive investment. This would require farmers to develop the knowledge and skills to gather and analyze data locally, rather than through third parties, which is no small hurdle. But farmers would retain more control over data.

How to do it

Regardless of which group drives the necessary investment for connectivity in agriculture, no single entity will be able to go it alone. All of these advances will require the industry’s main actors to embrace collaboration as an essential aspect of doing business. Going forward, winners in delivering connectivity to agriculture will need deep capabilities across various domains, ranging from knowledge of farm operations to advanced data analytics and the ability to offer solutions that integrate easily and smoothly with other platforms and adjacent industries. For example, data gathered by autonomous tractors should seamlessly flow to the computer controlling irrigation devices, which in turn should be able to use weather-station data to optimize irrigation plans.

Connectivity pioneers in the industry, however, have already started developing these new capabilities internally. Organizations prefer keeping proprietary data on operations internal for confidentiality and competitive reasons. This level of control also makes the data easier to analyze and helps the organization be more responsive to evolving client needs.

But developing new capabilities is not the end game. Agriculture players able to develop partnerships with telcos or LPWAN players will gain significant leverage in the new connected-agriculture ecosystem. Not only will they be able to procure connectivity hardware more easily and affordably through those partnerships, they will also be better positioned to develop close relationships with farmers as connectivity becomes a strategic issue. Input providers or distributors could thus find themselves in a connectivity race. If input providers manage to develop such partnerships, they could connect directly with farmers and cut out distributors entirely. If distributors win that race, they will consolidate their position in the value chain by remaining an essential intermediary, closer to the needs of farmers.

The public sector also could play a role by improving the economics of developing broadband networks, particularly in rural areas. For example, the German and Korean governments have played a major role in making network development more attractive by heavily subsidizing spectrum or providing tax breaks to telcos. 6 “Das Breitbandförderprogramm des Bundes” [in German], Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur, 2020, bmvi.de; 5G in Korea: Volume 1: Get a taste of the future, Samsung Electronics, 2019, samsungnetworks.com. Other regions could replicate this model, accelerating development of connective products by cost-effectively giving input providers and agritech companies assurance of a backbone over which they could deliver services. Eventual deployment of LEO satellite constellations would likely have a similar impact.

Agriculture, one of the world’s oldest industries, finds itself at a technological crossroads. To handle increasing demand and several disruptive trends successfully, the industry will need to overcome the challenges to deploying advanced connectivity. This will require significant investment in infrastructure and a realignment of traditional roles. It is a huge but critical undertaking, with more than $500 billion in value at stake. The success and sustainability of one of the planet’s oldest industries may well depend on this technology transformation, and those that embrace it at the outset may be best positioned to thrive in agriculture’s connectivity-driven future.

Lutz Goedde is a senior partner and global leader of McKinsey’s Agriculture Practice in the Denver office; Joshua Katz is a partner in the Stamford office; and Alexandre Menard is a senior partner in the Paris office, where Julien Revellat is an associate partner.

The authors wish to thank Nicolas D. Estais, Claus Gerckens, Vincent Tourangeau, and the McKinsey Center for Advanced Connectivity for their contributions to the article.

This article was edited by Daniel Eisenberg, a senior editor in the New York office.

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The Challenge of Feeding the World Sustainably: Summary of the US-UK Scientific Forum on Sustainable Agriculture (2021)

Chapter: 4 science and technology for sustainable agriculture, 4 science and technology for sustainable agriculture.

Ensuring that everyone has access to healthy and nutritious foods without further reducing biodiversity and damaging the environment will require major changes in many aspects of food systems. Yields on agricultural land will need to go up while the pollution from agricultural production declines. Agriculture will need to become a net sink rather than a source of greenhouse gas emissions by sequestering carbon in ecosystems and in the soil. The environmental effects of livestock production will need to be reduced while the nutritional benefits of animal-source products are maximized. People will need to eat more fruits and vegetables while reducing the large amounts of food that are wasted today.

As the 2019 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030 pointed out, creating a sustainable global food system will require the development and application of many new technologies and the continued pursuit of new scientific knowledge. 1 This chapter describes some of the many beneficial agricultural technologies that already exist and are on the horizon. The next chapter examines policies that will be needed to deploy those technologies and move toward a sustainable food system.

D ATA -I NTENSIVE A GRICULTURE

An approach known as precision agriculture offers great potential to improve yields, reduce costs, and minimize environmental damage. Mapping farms for soil moisture, temperature, nutrients, and other indicators using ground sensors, drones, and instruments on farm equipment can provide actionable insights for farmers, suppliers, and distributors. The measurement of ground conditions combined with remote sensing and the observation of weather patterns can optimize irrigation, fertilizing, weeding, and pesticide applications. Data gathered from farms can inform the development of better livestock, advisories based on artificial intelligence, and ways of monitoring technology usage. Simulation technologies can model scenarios to inform planning and prepare for contingencies.

The main barrier to precision agriculture, especially for smallholder farmers, is the cost of data collection, but the costs are dropping rapidly. For example, connectivity to instruments in the field

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1 NASEM (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine). 2019. Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030 . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

could be provided by devices that embed signals in unused television channels, many of which are vacant in rural areas. 2 Drones are available for $1,000 or less and can cover large areas quickly, and instruments carried by tethered balloons are even less expensive. New artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques can interpolate missing data from sensors, such as satellite data where clouds block views of the ground. Better connections between farmers and central databases can transfer data in both directions so that farmers can benefit from the analyses of the data collected on their farms and from best practice recommendations.

Farmers will also need education and training to be able to use these technologies and the information they provide, which implies, in part, working with young people to encourage them to get interested in farming and in applying these technologies. Also, the data collected by precision agriculture and the information generated from that data will be valuable and will need to be protected, with an equitable allocation of the benefits derived from that information. Some of the data can be anonymized, though this is a difficult challenge, because the data are so closely tied to location and to applications. Computer scientists will need to work with agricultural scientists and with farmers to overcome such challenges and to formulate experiments that can inform the development and deployment of technologies.

Beyond precision agriculture, a wide variety of other advanced technologies could be applied to agriculture to enhance sustainability. 3 , 4 New applications of technology could provide decision support to farmers and consumers, help connect the biological sciences with fields such as engineering and materials science, and ensure that data-collection methods are affordable and practical. Technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, process engineering, and synthetic biology could come together to shift the paradigm from “food produced by agriculture” to “food produced by manufacturing.” High-tech, three-dimensional vertical farms could efficiently produce clean and organic food within urban centers. Foods requiring less energy to produce could be grown near the point of consumption to reduce transportation costs, with energy-dense commodities produced near energy sources such as hydroelectric and solar power. Synthetic milk and meat products, insect and microbial bioreactors, marine algal culturing, biofortified foods, the use of insects for livestock feed, and closed-loop livestock production could enhance diets while reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture. A new green revolution could be based on science, ecological efficiency, and the careful management of food production and distribution. Nutrition, yields, and environmental outcomes could all benefit by maximizing the efficiency of the food system as a whole. 5

2 Roberts, S., P. Garnett, and R. Chandra. 2015. Connecting Africa Using the TV White Spaces: From Research to Real World Deployments . The 21st IEEE International Workshop on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks.

3 European Environment Agency. 2020. The European Environment—State and Outlook 2019. Knowledge for Transition to a Sustainable Europe . Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

4 Cui, Z., H. Zhang, X. Chen, C. Zhang, W. Ma, C. Huang, W. Zhang, G. Mi, Y. Miao, X. Li, Q. Gao, J. Yang, Z. Wang, Y. Ye, S. Guo, J. Lu, J. Huang, S. Lv, Y. Sun, Y. Liu, X. Peng, J. Ren, S. Li, X. Deng, X. Shi, Q. Zhang, Z. Yang, L. Tang, C. Wei, L. Jia, J. Zhang, M. He, Y. Tong, Q. Tang, X. Zhong, Z. Liu, N. Cao, C. Kou, H. Ying, Y. Yin, X. Jiao, Q. Zhang, M. Fan, R. Jiang, F. Zhang, and Z. Dou. 2018. Pursuing sustainable productivity with millions of smallholder farmers. Nature 555:363–366.

5 Benton, T. G., and R. Bailey. 2019. The paradox of productivity: How agricultural productivity promotes food system inefficiency. Global Sustainability 2(e6):1–8.

B IOTECHNOLOGIES

Genetic technologies and other advanced biotechnologies offer tremendous potential to improve agriculture, particularly if they are integrated with agronomy and agroecology. Examples of possible advances include crops and livestock resistant to high temperatures and drought, protection against new and emerging pests and disease, greater efficiency in water use, increased nutritional value in foods, and reduced fertilizer use.

Many such biotechnologies are already available or under development. For example, a new technique known as “speed breeding” has shortened the cycle from seed to seed. 6 Agricultural biotechnologies are being developed that can insert new genes into cells, edit and delete targeted genes, and alter multiple genes at once while avoiding breeding bottlenecks and the loss of diversity in crop populations.

An example of these biotechnologies involves the protection of crops from pests. One way that grasses such as maize, rice, and wheat protect themselves from herbivores is by taking up silicon from the soil and depositing it within plant cells and in spines and hairs on the plant surface, so that herbivores are less likely to consume the plant. Higher levels of silicon also protect against drought and salinity stress, though the mechanisms behind these effects are not fully understood. Domestication has reduced silicon levels in plants by a small amount, but these defenses largely remain in place. 7 Genetically modifying how plants use silicon could therefore provide possible mechanisms of pest resistance and drought resistance. This research has already led to inexpensive methods of increasing the supplies of silicate in soils to mitigate salt stress and improve yields, such as through the application of silicate-rich steel furnace slag. 8 Success in applying such methods will require not only technological advances but also integrating crop breeding and genetic approaches with agronomical practices and practical advice for farmers.

New tools that deliver DNA, RNA, or proteins into plant cells could enhance the use of genetic technologies in producing new food, bioenergy, or medicinal applications. A plant transformation technology that is independent of plant species, efficient, nonpathogenic, and nonintegrating (in that the DNA being introduced into the cell would not integrate into the plant’s DNA) would be especially valuable. 9 An example of such a technology is the ability to use new nanomaterials to

6 Watson, A., S. Ghosh, M. J. Williams, W. S. Cuddy, J. Simmonds, M-D Rey, M. A. Md Hatta, A. Hinchliffe, A. Steed, D. Reynolds, N. M. Adamski, A. Breakspear, A. Korolev, T. Rayner, L. E. Dixon, A. Riaz, W. Martin, M. Ryan, D. Edwards, J. Batley, H. Raman, J. Carter, C. Rogers, C. Domoney, G. Moore, W. Harwood, P. Nicholson, M. J. Dieters, I. H. DeLacy, J. Zhou, C. Uauy, S. A. Boden, R. F. Park, B. B. H. Wulff, and L. T. Hickey. 2018. Speed breeding is a powerful tool to accelerate crop research and breeding. Nature Plants 4:23–29.

7 Simpson, K. J., R. N. Wade, M. Rees, C. P. Osborne, and S. E. Hartley. 2017. Still armed after domestication? Impacts of domestication and agronomic selection on silicon defences in cereals. Functional Ecology 31(11):2108–2117.

8 Johnson, S. N., S. E. Hartley, J. M. W. Ryalls, A. Frew, J. L. DeGabriel, M. Duncan, and A. N. Gherlenda. 2017. Silicon-induced root nodulation and synthesis of essential amino acids in a legume is associated with higher herbivore abundance. Functional Ecology 31(10):1903–1909.

9 Landry, M. P., and N. Mitter. 2019. How nanocarriers delivering cargos in plants can change the GMO landscape. Nature Nanotechnology 14:512–514.

transfer DNA, RNA, or proteins through plant cell walls with a high level of control over the molecules being delivered. For example, the introduction of the genome-editing molecule CRISPR-Cas9 using this technique could enable the modification of genes without the usual need for extensive breeding programs to eliminate DNA introduced into the genome through other techniques. 10 Such a technique could be used to modify the traits of a wide range of commercially valuable crops, from wheat and cotton to spinach and arugula (rocket). It also could be used to address critical global issues in not only food production but also advanced biofuels and the synthesis of medical therapeutics.

Compared with the use of natural or induced genetic variation, targeted changes in DNA have many advantages when the genes that control the traits are known. 11 For example, modifications of flowering have the potential to improve the agronomic properties of many crops. To take a specific example, the modification in tomatoes of the genomic network that controls flowering can modulate plant size and yield in ways that are not possible with traditional breeding techniques. Such techniques can be used, for example, to create plants that can be grown through urban agriculture in vertical farming systems.

Grand challenge problems in biotechnology, while ambitious, could yield very high returns. An example would be the introduction of nitrogen-fixing capabilities directly into crops to reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizers and to boost yields where fertilizer use is currently suboptimal. Many of the genes that would be involved in fixing nitrogen in crops already exist because they play other roles in these plants. Another option would be to modify the microorganisms present in soil that live in association with plants and provide them with nitrogen and other nutrients. Modifying these associations could also increase the sequestering of carbon in soil, enhancing soil health while also increasing yields. ( Box 4-1 presents more information about the possible uses of biotechnology to enhance soil health and fertility.)

Another potentially transformative step would be the development of crops with much higher photosynthetic efficiency, which could enable large improvements in yields. As a specific example, researchers are working on lowering the energetic cost of photorespiration, with the installation of a synthetic photorespiratory pathway improving yields by up to 25 percent. 12 Tests of this concept have shown potential, and many other opportunities exist to engineer more efficient photosynthesis.

Many crops produced using genetic technologies have already been approved and are in widespread use. Though the rate of progress has been limited by cost and by regulatory burdens, further advances could greatly enhance the sustainability of food systems. Particularly important will be increased knowledge of the genetic and environmental bases of phenotypes and the integration of this knowledge with better understanding of ecosystem-based approaches to agriculture.

10 Demirer, G. S., H. Zhang, N. S. Goh, E. González-Grandío, and M. P. Landry. 2019. Carbon nanotube–mediated DNA delivery without transgene integration in intact plants. Nature Protocols 14:2954–2971.

11 Eshed, Y., and Z. B. Lippman. 2019. Revolutions in agriculture chart a course for targeted breeding of old and new crops. Science 366(6466):705.

12 South, P. F., A. P. Cavanagh, H. W. Liu, and D. R. Ort. 2019. Synthetic glycolate metabolism pathways stimulate crop growth and productivity in the field. Science 363(6422):45.

T HE S OCIAL S CIENCES

Science and technology for sustainable agriculture include the social sciences. The emerging field of climate adaptation requires scenario and policy analyses. Efforts to change diets require interdisciplinary assessments of incentives and preferences. Changing the behavior of farmers and other actors in food systems requires understanding of incentives and barriers to change.

An important policy question that involves the social sciences is whether a keystone intervention could drive a transformation to sustainable agriculture or whether many complementary interventions are needed. For example, anti-smoking campaigns typically have involved many interventions, including education, taxes, regulation, and alternative products. How many policies would be needed to transform food systems from a business-as-usual model to an agrobiodiverse, regenerative, food-secure, equitable, and just system? Could a keystone intervention take the form of governmental initiatives, international coordination, or education and training to give people the skills they need to adopt sustainable and healthy diets?

Some policy levers are undoubtedly powerful, such as price changes created by a carbon tax, but whether they are enough to achieve the needed changes is unknown. For example, a carbon tax might do little to address biodiversity or the production of unhealthy foods, instead requiring multiple policy actions to achieve the desired outcomes. That said, events external to a system can sometimes produce rapid change, as has occurred with the coronavirus pandemic.

Another important question is how a transformation to sustainability can be just and fair both within and across countries. For example, many people are employed in the fossil fuel industry around the world. How can their needs and values be accommodated within such a transformation? The modeling of the entire food system and its links to other society systems could help reveal the dynamics of those systems and how they impact food availability and access (see Figure 4-1 ).

The need for sustainable agriculture is becoming ever more significant. The world's population is still increasing, requiring more from our agricultural systems. Malnutrition and diet-related illnesses are present in nearly all societies. At the same time, agriculture plays a significant role in some of the biggest environmental challenges that humanity is facing, including the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and the pollution of our soil, water, and air. The need to balance the growing demand for nutritious food with these environmental threats is a complex issue, and ensuring sustainable food systems will require a collaborative effort from many different communities.

These issues were addressed during the US-UK Scientific Forum on Sustainable Agriculture held in Washington, DC, on March 5-6, 2020. Organized by the National Academy of Sciences and the United Kingdom's Royal Society, the forum brought together leading scientists, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in agricultural sciences, food policy, biodiversity, and environmental science (among other specialties). The forum provided an opportunity for members of these research communities to build multidisciplinary and international collaborations that can inform solutions to a broad set of problems. This publication summarizes the presentations of the forum.

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Article Contents

Properly defining sustainable agriculture, sustainable agriculture and technological development, advancing good policies for sustainable agriculture, from the household responsibility system to sustainable agriculture, from utilizing mechanization to overcoming insufficient agricultural labor, farm trade and sustainable agriculture, biotechnology and sustainable agriculture, facing climate change challenges.

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Agriculture: science and technology safeguard sustainability

• Article contents
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• Supplementary Data

Hepeng Jia, Agriculture: science and technology safeguard sustainability, National Science Review , Volume 6, Issue 3, May 2019, Pages 595–600, https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwz036

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China has traditionally placed tremendous importance on agricultural research. Meanwhile, in recent years, sustainable agriculture has been increasingly highlighted in both policy agenda and the capital market. However, while terms like environmental friendliness, low carbon, organic and green agriculture have become buzzwords in the media, few meaningful discussions have been raised to examine the relationship between science and technology (S&T) development and sustainable agriculture. What's more, some environmentalists stress that sustainable agriculture should abandon modern agriculture's heavy reliance on science and industrialization, making the link between agricultural S&T and sustainable agriculture seem problematic. What is the truth? If S&T are to play an important role in advancing sustainable agriculture, what is the current status of the field? What factors have caused the sustainable development of agriculture in China? At an online forum organized by the National Science Review ( NSR ), Hepeng Jia, commissioned by NSR executive editor-in-chief Mu-ming Poo, asked four scientists in the field to examine the dynamic relationship between sustainable agriculture and agricultural S&T in the Chinese context.

Jikun Huang

Agricultural economist at Peking University, Beijing, China

Xiaofeng Luo

Agricultural economist at Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

Jianzhong Yan

Agricultural and environmental scientist at Southwest University, Chongqing, China

Veterinary scientist at Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changsha, China

Hepeng Jia (Chair)

Science communication scholar at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

Jia: In recent years, sustainable agriculture has become a hot issue in China. Meanwhile, the term is often confused with organic or green agriculture. In 2015, the State Council issued a national outline on sustainable agriculture. I guess that there should already be an authoritative definition. Let's discuss this first.

Luo: I personally think that low-carbon agriculture, organic agriculture or other concepts have emphasized different aspects of sustainable agriculture. For example, low-carbon agriculture stresses its energy-efficiency. Organic agriculture emphasizes the controlled use of chemical fertilizers and additives. Sustainable agriculture, by comparison, lies at a higher and more comprehensive level.

Yin: I think the concept of sustainable agriculture means that it realizes the balance of supply of agricultural products for contemporary human beings without destroying the resources for and the interests of future generations. It is the long-term stable development of agriculture and resources, but the key is to apply modern science and technology (S&T) to solve the bottleneck problems that restrict the sustainable development of agriculture.

No matter whether this sustainable agriculture features low-carbon agriculture or organic agriculture, the most fundamental aspect of sustainable agriculture is to adopt modern technology. —Yulong Yin

No matter whether this sustainable agriculture features low-carbon agriculture or organic agriculture, the most fundamental aspect of sustainable agriculture is to adopt modern technology. Only focusing on low-carbon agriculture or organic aspects of agriculture is not sustainable.

Jia: Prof. Yin said that technology plays a very important role in sustainable agriculture, but there are also some environmentalists who think that modern agriculture is too deeply affected by technology, which has impacted the sustainability of agriculture.

Huang: I agree with Prof. Luo and Prof. Yin. Sustainable agriculture does not only mean sustainability, but also means the growth of agriculture. Technological innovation is very important. Given the limit of water and land resources, you have to produce more products to meet food demand, you have to increase the productivity, and for certain products, the increased output must be achieved with fewer resources. Genetically modified (GM) crops are one of the many S&T innovations needed to support sustainable agriculture.

Yan: I am also interested in debates on the path of sustainable agriculture. In particular, there are some disputes between developed and developing countries on some aspects of sustainable development. Many developed countries have proposed sustainable development based on the situation of having abundant land resources. They adopt land- and capital-intensive patterns of agriculture and now they have more resources to stress environmental friendliness.

But in many developing countries, they have not come out of the so-called Malthusian trap [Editor's note: population outgrows resources and subsistence, leading to food shortages]. They still have poor people who struggle to make a living, are still destroying the environment and causing environmental pollution. Therefore, the understanding of sustainable agriculture between developed and developing countries may be different. China has some characteristics of developed countries and some characteristics of developing countries.

In the past two or three decades, China has experienced the process of the intensification of agriculture. In particular, China has been experiencing a revolution in agriculture, mainly characterized by the intensive use of labor force and capital in agriculture, for example, in vegetable farming. So, in this respect, we really have had some measures of intensive agricultural development as in developed countries.

On the other hand, the vast western part of China still has not got rid of the Malthusian trap. In these places, the problems of desertification and land loss are still very serious, and even more serious than in the past. So, in general, in terms of sustainable development, we have to adopt different paths to sustainable agriculture in different regions.

Jia: The panelists have a strong consensus that sustainable agriculture cannot be separated from modern S&T. Now let's examine how S&T innovations can promote sustainable agriculture.

Yin: I believe that achieving sustainable development of agriculture must rely on technology. At the primary level, technology can improve agricultural output, solving the contradiction between huge food demands and limited amounts of farmland.

We consume a lot of meat every day. But meat production is constrained by China's lack of land. For example, we need around 200 million tons of feed per year in China, more than the USA. Over 60% of that is imported. I believe that traditional or organic agriculture cannot fundamentally maintain China's food security and the sustainable development of agricultural restructuring.

In the past 20 years, S&T progress in animal husbandry has increased the survival rate of baby animals by 30% and improved feed conversion by 30%, and reduced nitrogen and ammonia emission by 20%, water consumption by 10% and feces production by 15%. Therefore, modern S&T play a key role in improving animal husbandry's outputs, minimizing its consumption of arable land and water resources, and reducing its pollution emissions. This certainly has contributed to the sustainable agriculture development.

However, domestic livestock and poultry farming still suffer from problems such as low feed utilization rates and epidemic disease. These lead to the inefficient use of food resources, feed waste and environmental pollution.

So, what do we do? We have to rely on modern agricultural technology. We have to improve water utilization efficiency. We must combine the farming and breeding industries. Agricultural mechanization is also very, very important. Some of the young people in our village now go to cities to work, so we have to engage in intelligent agriculture. We must make our agricultural machinery highly efficient, so that we can make our agriculture sustainable.

Luo: In the development of the entire agricultural economy, the important role of S&T goes without saying. First of all, it can compensate for the lack of resources, whether it is land or water. If you have to feed so many people, you must rely on technology under the premise of this rare land or water. Second, technology can also improve the efficiency of our agriculture. Traditionally, food security is the pursuit of the grain output. The reason why we have achieved continued grain output growth in these years is technology improvement.

For sustainable agriculture, China has some characteristics of developed countries and some characteristics of developing countries. —Jianzhong Yan

Then, I think technology is also improving our ecological environment. In recent years, China's agricultural ecological environment has been improved. This is, in large part, because technology plays a role, for example, reducing unnecessary resource consumption in agriculture.

Finally, agriculture is not the same as other industries. It is easily subject to natural disasters. There are many such unpredictable natural disasters. To reduce this risk, it is very important to rely on technology.

Huang: I would also add a little bit. Many technologies can promote the sustainable development of agriculture. Now irrigation technology, including water-saving irrigation technology, is very important. Chemical technology innovation promotes the uses of quality fertilizers and low-toxicity pesticides in China. Various bio-pesticides as well as the biological control of pests will play an important role in our sustainable development.

There are also some big improvements in agronomy, including the systematic integration of farming and animal husbandry. The application of ICTs (information and communication technologies) in agriculture is also emerging. They will have great impact on precision agriculture and more efficient use of resources. I think that the most important thing to talk about is biotechnology, because biotechnology is one of the most important technologies for promoting agricultural development, especially for sustainable agricultural development.

Jia: Sustainable agriculture needs a good system to support. Let's explore this aspect further.

Huang: Science and technology innovations are very important to sustainable agriculture, but we need a good incentive system and favorable institutional arrangements for these innovations. We have to provide better incentives for the scientists in the innovations, and appropriate incentives for farmers to use new technologies in agriculture. Generating new technology needs institutional guarantees. If you do not have a good national institutional arrangement, it is also difficult to generate and commercialize innovative technologies.

A pig farm in China as seen from outside. Facing challenges ranging from diseases like African swine fever to improving meat quality, China's animal husbandry is in urgent need of adopting modern S&T to support its sustainable development ( Courtesy of Yulong Yin ).

Jia: We all know that, in 2015, the State Council released a long-term plan for sustainable agriculture (2015–2030). Why is this important? Why do we need a State Council regulation rather than simply a ministry order? How can policies promote technology development for sustainable agriculture?

Science and technology innovations are very important to sustainable agriculture, but we need a good incentive system and favorable institutional arrangements for these innovations. —Jikun Huang

Huang: The development of sustainable agriculture has gone beyond any individual ministries. It is not simply about the environment, agricultural production or agriculture S&T. Therefore, top-level policy design and coordination are necessary.

Yin: I participated in some discussions about the development plan. It involves national food security, financial security and ecological security issues. The agricultural sector alone cannot be relied upon, nor is it completely implemented by the planning departments, nor is it solely done by the environmental agencies. The involvement of National Development and Reform Commissions (NDRC), the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education are all essential. To solve sustainable developments in agriculture, we must achieve the goals set by our agricultural S&T development plan. It needs top-level design and institutional arrangements at the national level so that all agencies can participate.

Then I think the plan enacted by the State Council means that its significance is very high, especially in the background of implementing the Beautiful China task required by President Xi Jinping. When we build a beautiful China, we must do this with sustainable development of agriculture. This is the new agricultural modernization road with Chinese characteristics. Top-level policy design and implementation are a must.

Meanwhile, while China's agricultural and rural economy has made great achievements, we also face some problems, that is, the excessive development of rural resources, the high input in agricultural production, and the excessive use of natural resources, especially groundwater. Therefore, the State Council issued such a document. It is a programmatic outline and an agenda of action.

Luo: The State Council's development plan is not just one document, but it also includes the Beautiful China strategy mentioned by Prof. Yin, which involves many ministries. So, if we want to promote sustainable development of agriculture, we need to have institutional arrangements. This national agricultural sustainable development plan is a type of institutional arrangement. Second, because the situations in different regions are different, the regional sustainable development strategies are definitely not the same.

Jia: We have discussed institutional arrangements for sustainable agriculture. China's household responsibility system for farmland use [Editor's note: the system enables Chinese peasants to hold long-term farmland-use rights for decades or even longer without legally changing the literal collective land ownership] has resulted in small-scale family farms, which may result in short-sighted behavior in agriculture. Will such short-sighted behavior impact sustainable agriculture?

Huang: The household responsibility system is a basic institutional arrangement in rural China and was the greatest institutional innovation in the past. I do not agree that it resulted in short-sighted behavior. This institutional reform has provided great incentives for farmers to raise productivity and increase agricultural production. Of course, it also leads to small-scale farming systems. But there are also many other institutional innovations that have promoted land consolidation, such as the land transfer platforms and land rental markets. In fact, the usage rights of more than one-third of farmers’ contracted land are now being transferred between farmers.

China does not have the natural conditions to develop big farms as in North and South America, but the scale of land transfers is not low. Let's compare with our neighbors. Japan and South Korea have adopted private ownership of land. But their land transfers in the past century were not higher than China in the past one or two decades. So, the key is not the scale of farms but developing appropriate farm sizes, generating advanced technologies that these farms can use, and offering off-farm jobs to rural laborers so that farm sizes will expand and farmers’ incomes will rise.

Yan: I will add one more point. In the past few years, there has been a lot of comparative research in China, comparing these small family farms with large farms set up on the basis of land transfer. It was found that in Shandong Province's vegetable or tobacco planting, small family farms have higher net returns and more productivity. The reason is simple. Large farms with transferred farmland pay rent and labor costs at the price of non-agricultural workers, but small family-run farms use their own elderly and women. They don’t need to pay wages, so this small farm is completely capable of competing with the ranch.

In fact, we are currently doing a lot of investigations in Chongqing and other southwestern regions. All the farms with transferred land are losing money. After the loss, they have to find local governments to provide them with subsidies. With government subsidies, some big farm operators insisted on operating their farms but made more losses. These facts show that land transfer and the corresponding large farms are not certainly the answer to sustainable agriculture.

China does not have the land resources to encourage large-scale farms like in the USA. Then, should labor- and capital-intensive farms of appropriate sizes be the main direction of our agricultural development?

Jia: Dr Yan has raised an important aspect of China's modern agriculture, the labor- and capital-intensive middle-sized and small farms. Can we elaborate on this in the context of sustainable agriculture?

Yan: This kind of new agriculture now accounts for about one-third of the cultivated land, but its output value is very high.

Conventional agriculture accounts for two-thirds of the country's cultivated land, planting crops such as grain, cotton, and rape, but its output value only accounts for over 10%. We will further pursue this labor- and capital-intensive agriculture in the future. This is because Chinese people have changed their food consumption structure from dominantly relying on grains to consuming a high amount of meat, eggs, vegetables and fruits. This is a natural result of our higher income. This has created good opportunities for sustainable agriculture.

The increasing number of middle-class people and their higher incomes have resulted in a huge demand for high-quality organic products. We do not talk about their production amount but their output value, because the current unit price of organic products is 10 times the unit price of conventional agricultural produce.

In fact, some regions in Shandong Province have already exported this organic agricultural produce to Japan and South Korea. Their tests are very strict. It is said that some of Shandong's organic agricultural produce exports to Japan will undergo tests with more than 600 components. This type of labor- and capital-intensive small farm is transforming our agriculture. Because we now have so many middle-class people, meeting their demands will promote the transformation of agriculture into these high-value small farms.

Yin: I have a slightly different view. The household responsibility system has its own limitations, such as hindering the development of agricultural mechanization. If I only have two or three mu (1 mu = 0.16 acre) of land in my household, how can we engage in agricultural mechanization? This small farm may waste the production resources and the productivity is low.

We have been discussing land transfer. But in my hometown, much farmland is no longer planted. All the young peasants are working in cities. The land is deserted there. But in some cases, when the land can be transferred to be concentrated with one or two very capable farmers, they have incentives to cultivate the farmland, as the land concentration will not only lower costs but can also be used for finance.

Jia: Prof. Yin has raised an important point – the abandonment of farmland. In fact, it is inevitable to talk about China's urbanization here. After working in cities, young peasants will not return to the countryside. Will this have a great impact on sustainable agriculture?

Luo: Agricultural development needs a high-quality workforce. Currently, the rural labor force dramatically flows to the city, leaving the countryside with old people. I think we may need technology to solve insufficient labor quantity and quality.

At present, many regions are promoting the use of technologies, such as drones or information technology, to solve the problem of insufficient labor. The development of this smart agriculture can be a very important direction for our sustainable agriculture.

Yan: At present, the ways to solve labor outflows in different regions vary. Social services, such as providing machine sowing, machine harvesting, or socialization, are adopted to solve the problem in many parts of China. At present, the demand for labor in plains areas is greatly reduced, and seniors who remain in the countryside can meet the demand.

But in mountainous areas, the problem is very obvious. The cultivated land is far away from the residents. Therefore, in mountainous areas, farmland abandonment is particularly serious. But there are also mechanization efforts to overcome this. Small farms may hinder the application of mechanization. But in recent years in China, small and micro machines, such as handheld grass cutters and micro tractors, have been widely used. This can solve the labor insufficiency after young peasants move to cities.

In some areas where using machines is too difficult, we can simply abandon them, and they can be reforested. Abandoning marginal land is a worldwide trend. There is nothing to worry about. In fact, despite workforce loss and abandoned land, China's agricultural outputs have kept on growing in recent years.

Huang: I want to follow up the point on outflow of young labor from the countryside. This is a reality but certainly not a problem. The average age of agricultural labor in China is about 53 to 54. In the USA, the average age of farmers was 58.3 in 2012 while, in Japan, the average age is 67. This is a result of natural selection or division of labor. Senior persons generally have more comparative advantage in farming than in manufacturing or service industries, while youths have less comparative advantage in farming than other sectors. In most countries, you will find a positive association between per capita income and the age of agricultural labor.

So, the problem is not that we have older peasants left in rural areas, but how to improve their capacity to use new technologies. Don’t expect many young peasants to return to the countryside for farming.

Technological innovation can help to deal with the ageing issue in farming. For example, agricultural machines can be made easier to use for seniors.

We need technology to solve insufficient labor quantity and quality needed for sustainable agriculture. —Xiaofeng Luo

A tea farmer in the Chinese province of Hubei picking tea with a tea-picking machine. Small-scale machinery has been widely used in the Chinese countryside to solve labor shortages while improving the efficiency of sustainable agriculture ( Source: China News Service Photo ).

Another point is the difficulty in mechanization for farmland in mountain areas. While small machines can partially help to solve this problem, with higher labor costs, planting conventional crops in these areas may not have reasonable profit. I think this can be partially solved by transforming production structure from the current crops to forage grass or orchard production. In many southern mountainous areas, natural conditions are very suitable for developing grass.

Yin: Growing herbal plants may be considered as one division of these grass and timber industries. In recent years, it has developed very quickly in my hometown province of Hunan.

Yan: The central government now has subsidized agricultural mechanization, including using micro machines in mountainous farmland. Now rechargeable grass cutters are widely used in the Chinese countryside. So here we have another example of S&T innovations promoting sustainable agriculture.

Jia: Like the outflow of young agricultural labor, another major trend in agriculture in China is the massive imports of agricultural products such as soybean and corn. How will the farm trade impact on sustainable agriculture?

Huang: I want to correct one point. We are the world's largest importer of agricultural products in terms of total amounts, but China's per capita import values are one of the lowest. China imports land- and water-resource-intensive agricultural products but exports products like fruit, vegetables, fish and processed food products. The net import is only about 5% of our total food consumption, primarily soybean, sugar and dairy products. If counted in water, the amount of water needed to irrigate the imported agricultural products in 2015 was equivalent to 25% of the total irrigation water in China in that year. If counted in land, the amount of land needed to plant the imported agricultural products in 2015 was equivalent to 35% of China's total farmland. Therefore, imports substantially reduce China's pressure on scarce land and water resources, contributing to sustainable agriculture.

Yin: I basically agree with Prof. Huang. But facing the current trade war, it is necessary for China to increase its own soybean output, so that our food security can be safeguarded.

Yan: What Prof. Huang recommended is equivalent to the so-called virtual water and virtual land. With the globalization of resources and supply chains, it is reasonable for the government to study how to ‘save’ and ‘develop’ these virtual resources. For example, African and South American countries are also very eager to sell their agricultural products to us. Carefully planning these virtual resources will promote China's sustainable agriculture.

Jia: This forum was scheduled to discuss the role of agricultural biotechnology and particularly GM (genetic modification) technology in sustainable agriculture. Prof. Huang is the nation's top expert on this. Can you clarify the relationship?

Huang : GM technology has been shown to increase crop yield and lower production costs, which raises farmers’ income. With the adoption of GM technology, China can also reduce its agricultural imports. With rising agricultural production and therefore falling prices, the competitiveness of China's agriculture can be improved, which contributes to China's national food security. Because most of the current GM technologies are resistant to insects, the technologies have significantly reduced the amount of pesticides used. The biggest problem with food security now is the high residue of pesticide in food, and the development of our GM technology can promote food security by reducing pesticides.

GM technology can also improve the efficiency of all chemical use. By reducing the use of pesticides and fertilizers, GM technology will have a very important impact on our greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

In addition, the drought-resistant GM varieties can save water. Taken together with GM technology, we will be able to develop more resource-saving agriculture, and the increase in productivity is equivalent to saving farmland for a given output.

In fact, agricultural biotechnology is not limited to GM technology. It is estimated that the annual output value of agricultural biotechnology should have surpassed 100 billion yuan (US$14.4 billion), including animal biotech medicine, animal vaccines, biotech fertilizers, molecular breeding, ecological protection and so on. In addition to GM technologies, there are many new types of agricultural biotechnology, such as new enzymes that transform straw to feed suitable for ruminant animals through fermentation. Using corn to feed pigs, perhaps products from 1 mu of corn can only meet the food demands of one pig, but if we can transform straw to feed, we can raise five pigs using the same amount of farmland.

Jia: Given the vital importance of agricultural biotechnology, particularly GM technologies, in sustainable agriculture, why did the abovementioned 2015 national plan on sustainable agriculture not mention GM technologies?

Huang: One reason could be planning officials’ lack of knowledge on GM technologies. But more importantly, it might be influenced by public opposition. Our studies show that, in 2001, the percentage of consumers accepting GM technologies reached two-thirds, but it declined to 24% in 2012, and further down to just over 10% in 2016. More science popularization efforts for GM technologies should be made, but on the other hand, policymakers should not rely too much on public opinion to decide whether to advance GM technologies. There should be political commitment to push ahead and commercialize GM technologies given their tremendous role in raising agricultural productivity and sustainable development of agriculture.

Jia: Climate change is one of the grand challenges that human beings face. What can sustainable agriculture do for us in this aspect?

Yan: We have been studying the impact of climate change in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. Well, climate change may have some positive impacts on China's agriculture, and it may also have negative impacts. As the climate warms, it makes the planting of many crops in China move northward and often westward, right? In the past few years, the expansion of many crops such as glutinous rice and wheat has been very obvious.

On the other hand, the negative effects of this climate change are that there are more disasters. Many of these droughts, and droughts caused by this extreme climate in particular, have a great impact on pastoral areas! In other words, climate warming will exacerbate the prevalence of pests and diseases, making the use of pesticides increase. In addition, higher temperatures have also caused soil to lose organic matter, which has accelerated the degradation of the soil. Both the positive and negative impacts of climate change raise challenges to sustainable agriculture.

Huang: I agree with Dr Yan. Climate change has different effects in different regions in China. So simply talking about how climate change is a problem for sustainable agriculture is not enough. It has both positive and negative influences. In particular, there are management issues related to water, because no matter whether the consequence of climate change is drought or floods, they are related to water management. Therefore, we should further strengthen the utilization of water resources, improve their efficient use, and manage related issues in water resources. This is an important aspect of sustainable agriculture.

Just now we emphasized the role of technology in sustainable agriculture. Faced with the challenge brought by climate change, it is necessary to promote sustainable agriculture with technology.

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Unlocking Agricultural Innovation: A Roadmap for Growth and Sustainability

• Published: 22 February 2024

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• Elahe Davoodi Farsani 1 ,
• Shahla Choobchian   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2750-1094 1 &
• Moslem Shirvani Naghani 2  

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Agricultural innovation is crucial for navigating the dynamic market landscape and overcoming the diverse challenges posed by the current economic climate. It serves as a primary driver for both social advancement and economic prosperity, embodying the transformative force necessary for sustainable progress. Specifically, eco-friendly innovation not only boosts productivity but also promotes the responsible use of natural resources, marking a significant stride towards environmental stewardship. Identifying innovation indicators in agriculture is essential for achieving sustainable development and providing a benchmark for assessing progress in this pivotal industry. Recognizing the existing gap in this area, this paper aims to formulate and evaluate innovation indicators within the agricultural sector. Using the qualitative content analysis method with a deductive approach, the study meticulously examines a comprehensive research sample comprising 32 articles, three theses, and one book. The findings reveal eight primary factors that serve as key indicators of innovation in agriculture, covering aspects such as human capital and research, institutional frameworks, market sophistication, infrastructure, knowledge and technology outputs, and creative and innovative endeavors. This research represents a critical step in providing immediate insights into the effectiveness of political strategies and initiatives aimed at fostering innovation in the agricultural industry. By equipping policymakers with a thorough understanding of the current state of innovation in this sector, these insights have the potential to significantly alleviate food insecurity and stimulate economic growth. Thus, empowering policymakers with actionable insights derived from this study can pave the way for transformative change, driving the agricultural sector towards enhanced resilience and prosperity.

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Farsani, E.D., Choobchian, S. & Naghani, M.S. Unlocking Agricultural Innovation: A Roadmap for Growth and Sustainability. J Knowl Econ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-01860-w

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• The Bridge: 50th Anniversary Issue

The Role of Engineering and Technology in Agriculture

Author: Michael A. Steinwand and Pamela C. Ronald

By 2050, the global population is predicted to reach 9.7 billion. If consumption practices do not change and food continues to be wasted at alarming rates, farmers around the world will need to increase production 25–100 percent to meet the associated increase in food demand (Hunter et al. 2017).

At the same time, crop yield is stagnating in many parts of the world (Ray et al. 2012), and climate change threatens the yields and nutritional content of major crops (Myers et al. 2014; Rosenzweig et al. 2014). Additionally, the range of crop pathogens and insect pests is expanding toward the global poles (Bebber et al. 2013).

These challenges to sustained food security require multiple solutions encompassing social, scientific, and economic change. In this essay we highlight the current and future role of genetic technologies in advancing sustainable agriculture, reducing food insecurity around the world, diversify­ing the global diet, and enhancing health through the decreased use of pesticides.

Technological Advances in Crop Engineering

Humans have manipulated plant genomes for ­millennia, long before understanding the DNA underlying heritable genetics. Early domestication of wild species involved selection of characteristics such as upright vegetative structure, uniform flowering, seed retention on the plant for easier harvest, and reductions in seed dormancy and toxic chemicals in edible tissues. ­Geographic dispersal established locally adapted landrace cultivars.

The rise in molecular genetic tools has ushered in the era of genomic breeding, wherein molecular breeding and genetic engineering have gained prominence. Crop species can now be developed in a fraction of the time and with a broader array of changes than could be achieved with conventional breeding.

Crop Diversity

Genetic diversity is a crucial resource for crop improvement. It can be introduced via mutagenesis using irradiation or chemical treatment, crossbreeding with related or wild populations, genetic engineering (introducing a gene from a distantly related species such as another plant species or a microbe), or gene editing (mutation or insertion of a gene at a specific locus).

Plant breeding techniques may introduce valuable agronomic traits such as enhanced environ­mental and biotic stress tolerance to minimize yield losses and improve food nutrition and quality. Underutilized and regionally important crops, often adapted to grow on marginal lands, can be improved and grown more ­widely to diversify the global diet.

Genomics, Proteomics, and Other “Omics”

Recent technological advances and reduced costs have led to molecular “omics” studies in plant science, profiling the total complement of a biological unit such as genes (the genome) or proteins (the ­proteome). ­Whereas producing the first plant genome (of ­Arabidopsis thaliana) required 10 years and $100 million, a new Arabidopsis genome can now be sequenced for a few thousand dollars (Li and Harkess 2018).

With modern high-throughput genome sequencing technology more economically accessible, the breadth of species with genomic data is expanding to include regionally important staple crops (e.g., ­cassava and ­finger millet) historically neglected in breeding programs of developed economies (Hendre et al. 2019). Computational correlative association studies synthesize the information in agronomic, proteomic, transcriptomic, and/or metabolomic data to reveal the genetic profiles underpinning complex traits such as flavor, drought tolerance, disease resistance, and yield.

The discovery and refinement of targetable site-directed nuclease (SDN) enzymes enables precision manipulation of crop genomes (gene editing), deleting or changing DNA base pairs at specific sites to introduce genetic mutations. The RNA-guided SDN called CRISPR-Cas has become a dominant tool since 2013, when its use in gene editing was demonstrated in plant cells (e.g., Shan et al. 2013).

Enhanced Disease Resistance to Address Food Insecurity

Plant diseases and pests (e.g., fungi, bacteria, ­nematodes) reduce the annual global yield of major crops by an estimated 17–30 percent (Savary et al. 2019), with higher losses in food-insecure regions. Among many ways to address this problem are genetic engineering to add genetic material that confers resistance and mutation of the plant genes that facilitate disease susceptibility (because they either suppress plant immune responses or are required by the plant pathogen for its growth and proliferation).

Underutilized and regionally important crops, adapted to grow on marginal lands, can be grown more widely to diversify the global diet.

Disease susceptibility genes have been identified widely in crop species of agronomic importance and are often conserved between species. For example, ­breeders have used a naturally occurring mutant allele of the ­mildew resistance locus O (MLO) gene to confer heritable broad-spectrum immunity against powdery mildew ­races in susceptible barley cultivars for decades. Researchers used SDNs to edit the corresponding MLO genes in wheat (Wang et al. 2014) to generate similar resistance to the powdery mildew species infecting these crops.

Reduced Use of Chemical Insecticides

One of the most prevalent engineered traits across many crops, including maize, soybean, cotton, and eggplant, is insect resistance conferred by genes originating from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Bt insecticidal sprays have been used in organic agriculture for many years because they are specific to pests and nontoxic to humans and wildlife. Although useful, in many cases the sprays are expensive and do not prevent the insect from getting inside the plant.

As an alternative to sprays, geneticists have engineered the Bt gene directly into the crop genome. On average, use of Bt maize, soybean, and cotton crops has resulted in 37 percent less insecticide use (Klümper and Qaim 2014). Recent analysis finds that widespread planting of Bt field corn also has regional insect pest-suppressive benefits to nearby non-Bt vegetable crops, which translates into fewer chemical insecticide sprays and less damage from corn borer insects (Dively et al. 2018).

Plant genetic material can be added or mutated to enhance disease resistance.

The cultivation of Bt-resistant crops has reduced both the use of chemical insecticides by 50 percent in India and acute pesticide poisonings in cotton growers (Kouser and Qaim 2011). In neighboring Bangladesh, the introduction of four varieties of Bt eggplant in 2014 led to a sixfold increase in net returns for farmers, in part due to a 61 percent reduction in insecticide costs (Shelton et al. 2019).

Going Forward

Crop genetic improvement ranges from the deletion of a few small DNA regions to the introduction of new genes or entire genetic pathways to produce new chemical compounds or agronomic traits. These genetic alterations will facilitate crop trait improvement programs.

Modern biotechnologies enable scientists to introduce genetic changes that enhance disease resistance, increase yield, or enable growth on marginal lands. One exciting application is the potential to rapidly accelerate the domestication of wild plant species. A recent proof-of-concept study used a genome editing approach to increase the size and number of the ancestor of the ­modern tomato, so that it resembles commercial ­tomatoes but retains the stress tolerance traits of the wild parent (Li et al. 2018). Such efforts will likely broaden and diversify the food supply of the human diet.

The targeted DNA breakages caused by SDNs may also serve as insertion points for transgenic gene clusters that enhance the nutritional content of a crop. For example, the Golden Rice trait introduces vitamin A precursor betacarotene in rice grain and has recently been approved for consumption in many countries. Production and consumption of Golden Rice will save the lives of thousands of children and young mothers suffering from vitamin A deficiency (golden rice.org). We recently demonstrated that an SDN technology can be used to insert this trait in a precise genomic target (Dong et al. 2020). Further refinement of the technique would allow for multiple traits to be stacked at targeted genomic regions, facilitating subsequent breeding.

Adoption of these new biotechnology products remains limited. In 2017, 26 countries cultivated 191.7 million hectares of genetically engineered crops, with only five countries—the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and India—collectively representing 91 percent of the global transgenic crop area (ISAAA 2018). In many countries governmental frameworks for regulating genetically engineered crops are well established, whereas those governing the techniques of gene editing in crops are rapidly evolving. For example, in the European Union the EU court of justice decision stating that crops developed through genome editing must be regulated as strictly as genetically engineered products complicates EU scientific field trials of genome-edited crops and restricts farmer adoption (Faure and Napier 2019). In contrast, under its biotechnology regulations, the USDA does not regulate or have any plans to regulate genome-edited crops as long as they are not plant pests or developed using plant pests (USDA 2018).

The process for commercialization of transgenic technologies and crop varieties is affected by political and socioeconomic concerns and can span decades, making it difficult to address urgent agricultural needs. Consequently, in many parts of the world, breeders and farmers do not have ready access to some genetically engineered crops. For example, while farmers in Bangladesh cultivate Bt eggplant, it is prohibited in neighboring India despite farmer demand and its clear benefits in reducing insecticide use. Similarly, organic farmers do not have access to genetically engineered crops because genetic engineering techniques are excluded from use in certified organic production (even though other types of genetic alteration such as chemical and radiation mutagenesis are permitted).

There remains a need for ongoing engagement of the scientific community with diverse stakeholders, including consumers and politicians, on the challenges faced by farmers and the use of plant biotechnologies to address these challenges. Increasingly polarized political environments and fundamental changes in how information is shared have given new urgency to the problem of the disconnect between public opinion and scientific consensus on scientific topics.

Acknowledgments

M.A.S. was supported by a Corteva Agriscience Open Innovation program grant entitled “Gene Editing for Organic Agriculture.” P.C.R. was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (award no. 1237975), Crary Social Ecology Fund, Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research (award no. 534683), and National Institutes of Health (GM122968).

Bebber DP, Ramotowski MAT, Gurr SJ. 2013 Crop pests and pathogens move polewards in a warming world. Nature Climate Change 3:985–88.

Dively GP, Venugopal PD, Bean D, Whalen J, Holmstrom K, Kuhar TP, Doughty HB, Patton T, Cissel W, ­Hutchison WD. 2018. Regional pest suppression associated with widespread Bt maize adoption benefits vegetable growers. ­Proceedings, National Academy of Sciences 115:3320–25.

Dong OX, Yu S, Jain R, Zhang N, Duong PQ, Butler C, Li Y, Lipzen A, Martin JA, Barry KW, and 3 others. 2020. Marker-free carotenoid-enriched rice generated through targeted gene insertion using CRISPR-Cas9. Nature Communications 11:1178.

Faure J-D, Napier JA. 2018. Point of view: Europe’s first and last field trial of gene-edited plants? eLife 7:42379.

Hendre PS, Muthemba S, Kariba R, Muchugi A, Fu Y, Chang Y, Song B, Liu H, Liu M, Liao X, and 15 others. 2019. African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC): Status of developing genomic resources for African orphan crops. Planta 250:989–1003.

Hunter MC, Smith RG, Schipanski ME, Atwood LW, Mortensen DA. 2017. Agriculture in 2050: Recalibrating targets for sustainable intensification. Bioscience 67:386–91.

ISAAA [International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications]. 2018. Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops in 2018 (Brief 54). Ithaca NY.

Klümper W, Qaim M. 2014. A meta-analysis of the impacts of genetically modified crops. PLoS One 9(11):e111629.

Kouser S, Qaim M. 2011. Impact of Bt cotton on pesticide poisoning in smallholder agriculture: A panel data analysis. Ecological Economics 70:2105–13.

Li F-W, Harkess A. 2018. A guide to sequence your favorite plant genomes. Applications in Plant Sciences 6(3):1–7.

Li T, Yang X, Yu Y, Si X, Zhai X, Zhang H, Dong W, Gao C, Xu C. 2018. Domestication of wild tomato is accelerated by genome editing. Nature Biotechnology 36:1160–63.

Myers SS, Zanobetti A, Kloog I, Huybers P, Leakey ADB, Bloom AJ, Carlisle E, Dietterich LH, Fitzgerald G, ­Hasegawa T, and 10 others. 2014. Increasing CO 2 ­threatens human nutrition. Nature 510:139–42.

Ray DK, Ramankutty N, Mueller ND, West PC, Foley JA. 2012. Recent patterns of crop yield growth and stagnation. Nature Communications 3:1293.

Rosenzweig C, Elliott J, Deryng D, Ruane AC, Müller C, Arneth A, Boote KJ, Folberth C, Glotter M, Khabarov N, and 7 others. 2014. Assessing agricultural risks of climate change in the 21st century in a global gridded crop model intercomparison. Proceedings, National Academy of Sciences 111:3268–73.

Savary S, Willocquet L, Pethybridge SJ, Esker P, McRoberts N, Nelson A. 2019. The global burden of pathogens and pests on major food crops. Nature Ecology & Evolution 3:430–39.

Shan Q, Wang Y, Li J, Zhang Y, Chen K, Liang Z, Zhang K, Liu J, Xi JJ, Qiu J-L, Gao C. 2013. Targeted genome modification of crop plants using a CRISPR-Cas system. Nature Biotechnology 31:686–88.

Shelton AM, Hossain MJ, Paranjape V, Prodhan MZH, Azad AK, Majumder R, Sarwer SH, Hossain MA. 2019. Bt ­Brinjal in Bangladesh: The first genetically engineered food crop in a developing country. Cold Spring Harbor ­Perspectives in Biology a034678.

Steinwand MA, Ronald PC. 2020. Crop biotechnology and the future of food. Nature Food 1:273–83.

USDA [US Department of Agriculture]. 2018. Secretary ­Perdue issues USDA statement on plant breeding innovation. Press release, Mar 28. Washington.

Wang Y, Cheng X, Shan Q, Zhang Y, Liu J, Gao C, Qiu JL. 2014. Simultaneous editing of three homoeoalleles in ­shexaploid bread wheat confers heritable resistance to ­powdery mildew. Nature Biotechnology 32:947–51.

 This essay was adapted from Steinwand and Ronald (2020).

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Science and Technology in World Agriculture: Narratives and Discourses

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Celebrating Science & Innovation in Agriculture

A story by:.

Agriculture today is about so much more than a farmer simply planting a seed, rearing a cow or catching a fish. It takes a whole ecosystem and a host of actors to work together to produce the food we need for a population of more than eight billion people.

This complex agricultural production system has evolved over time through scientific discoveries and other innovations. It is this dynamic nature that will equip agriculture to cope with the competing challenges of addressing food and nutrition security, improving livelihoods, combatting climate change and sustainably managing natural resources.

Let’s take a closer look at “science and innovation” in agriculture: the ways it works, the benefits it provides and the future challenges it must still help us to overcome.

Natural Resource Management

The world’s 570 million farmers are arguably the most important stewards of the earth’s land, water and biodiversity. Worldwide, farming uses  around 40% of total land area , two-thirds of water withdrawals and 85% of water consumption today. This is up from  around 7% of total land area  back in the year 1700 when the population was less than 10% of what it is today.

Advances in technology and farming practices have helped farmers become much more productive, growing crops efficiently in areas most suitable for agricultural production.

Without these advances, far more land would need to be cultivated to produce the food we need today. For instance, it has been estimated that we could produce the same amount of total food grown fifty years ago on less than one-third the amount of land used back then. If yields had stayed the same since 1961, we’d need to cultivate  more than double the amount of land  to feed the population today – a shift from 12.2 billion acres to at least 26.3 billion acres. That’s 82% of our total land area on earth.

Similarly, farmers tend to use water more efficiently as their yields increase. According to the  International Water Management Institute , a farmer who grows about eight times the yield of another farmer uses only about three times as much water to do so.

In the coastal region of southern Bangladesh, soil salinity and a shortage of water for irrigation typically keep farmers from growing a crop in the dry season. However, a group of innovative women farmers is increasing production of maize, wheat and mung bean during the dry season despite these challenges. Key to their success has been using simple machinery to reduce tillage. This allows for earlier planting and keep crop residues on the soil surface to conserve soil moisture and reduce salinity. The women have also used crop varieties that mature faster.

In central Bangladesh, where the cost of irrigation and farm labour is skyrocketing, farmers and local service providers are teaming up to plant wheat, maize and legumes on raised beds to reduce labour and water requirements.

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia in Bangladesh (CSISA-BD) are working in partnership with the Regional Wheat Research Consortium of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute on this initiative.

Indonesia’s rich landscape makes it ideal for cultivating commodities like palm oil. Yet the increasing incidence of farmers burning land to bring it into production is having grave environmental consequences. Satellite-mapping company DigitalGlobe is working with the World Resources Institute in Indonesia to create a better picture of the earth’s surface, as part of the “Global Forest Watch” (GFW) initiative. Global Forest Watch is an interactive online forest monitoring and alert system designed to empower people everywhere with the information they need to better manage and conserve forest landscapes.

DigitalGlobe’s technology in Indonesia enables the team to see high-resolution visuals of fires and haze patterns that are affecting the environment. The images are then passed on to government agencies who are then better equipped to locate those responsible and develop better policies to prevent this from happening. Global Forest Watch allows users to create custom maps, analyse forest trends, subscribe to alerts, or download data for their local area or the entire world. Users can also contribute to GFW by sharing data and stories from the ground via GFW’s crowdsourcing tools, blogs, and discussion groups.

The low-rainfall area of Barmer, Rajasthan, India can remain dry for up to 11 months of the year. If the rains do not come, farmers struggle to find enough water for their food crops, or for the goats that families keep as a source of milk and manure. Many men have also migrated to the city to find work.

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is working with women in Barmer, offering interventions to help reduce the drudgery of the labour women must undertake to survive. Women are helped to organise themselves into self help groups, and taught how to harvest rainwater. Using this harvested water, the women are taught how to keep small agri-horticultural gardens, which they can also use to earn an income. Improved seeds of pearl millet and other beans are also provided.

One farmer who has seen great success is Mani Devi. She used the profits from her garden to buy a sewing machine, and is now training women in her family and the rest of the village on how to use it.

Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are most often linked to the military. However, potato scientists at the International Potato Centre (CIP) are putting them to another use – to gather data on plant life.

Remote sensing projects are helping scientists to observe how plant life develops and evolves across landscapes over time through characteristics such as biomass, nutrient content, disease and water use. In this sense, scientists can use UAVs to collect images and data on plant numbers and type, the lay of agricultural land, and how crops are being affected by disease and climate change.

Currently CIP uses a number of airplane and helicopter UAVs including an Oktokopter XL. This insect-like remote flying machine was acquired from MikroKopter (Germany) and assembled in CIP and is capable of carrying up to two kilograms of camera and computer equipment and flying at altitudes of over 100 metres for up to 12 minutes depending on the application. The Oktokopter XL is also able to fly at a stationary position, which makes it an excellent tool for aerial photography.

The forests of the Congo basin stretch over two million square kilometres, making it the second largest rainforest area in the world. Forests are essential for local and global life, as they not only provide food and a livelihood for the community, but also help prevent global warming by storing vast amounts of carbon from being released into the atmosphere.

But a rapidly growing population and a diminishing source of fish are leading people in the Democratic Republic of Congo to undertake slash and burn agriculture in the forest basin.

As part of a project run by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a new course at the University of Kisangani is helping students collect better data on Congo’s forest, and perform agricultural activities whilst managing its biodiversity sustainably. There are currently few technically trained academics and scientists in DRC, and even fewer women involved in these subjects. Agents responsible for stewarding the forests are also attending courses, to learn more about the impact of human activity on forests.

In Matopo, Zimbabwe, conservation agriculture (CA) techniques have been proved to help farmers increase their yields and conserve  natural resources .

Trained in CA, farmers use a variety of practices and technologies such as digging planting pits, improving soil fertility with manure, mulch or legumes, and precise planting. By  multiple cropping  and rotating maize with indigenous nutrient-rich crops, the soil quality builds over time. Crop residues trap moisture, control weeds, and maintain cooler soil temperatures.

Despite challenging climatic conditions over a period of 3 years, farmers reported increases in yields of sorghum, millet and maize, from an average of about 0.5 tonnes to between 3-4 tonnes per hectare.

Another survey in Zimbabwe compared CA with conventional farming practices under low, normal and high rainfall situations. Regardless of the level of rainfall, farmers achieved yields between 2 and 6 times of those under conventional practices whilst benefitting from reduced input requirements.

Agriculture for Impact has compiled a comprehensive collection of case studies of “sustainable intensification” in action.

Agricultural Extension

Innovation is not only driven by technological advances, but also through novel ways of organizing farmers and connecting them to the information they need.

Many smallholder farmers around the world still farm the same way their ancestors did thousands of years ago. Traditional farming approaches may continue to work for some, but new practices can help many to substantially improve yields, soil quality and natural capital as well as food and nutrition security.

For example, a smallholder farmer in Africa might still scatter her seeds across her land, rather than planting evenly and in rows. This stops the plant’s roots from taking up the maximum amount of nutrients from the soil. She might use seed saved from generation to generation. While indigenous seeds are important to protect genetic diversity, improved seeds could also help her to adapt to changing climate conditions, fight crop diseases and produce higher yields. She may plant the same crop year after year, rather than rotating her crops or planting a range of crops together to grow more, maintain soil health and diversify her family’s diet. And she might store her harvest in such a way that leaves it susceptible to pests, diseases and rot.

Sometimes, innovations to address these issues are taken to farms via extension training. Farmers themselves can be organized in innovative ways so they are reached more easily and effectively with information. The type and style of the extension itself has evolved much over time. For instance, advances in satellite mapping and information and communications technologies (ICTs) are transforming more traditional agricultural extension work today. Farming is becoming more precise and productive as a result.

Banana bunchy top disease (BBTD) is a devastating virus infecting bananas worldwide. It has had a huge impact on both industrial banana production and on subsistence farmers who depend on the crop to feed their families and provide income. Once established, it is very difficult to eradicate and manage the disease.

According to FAO statistics, Nigeria is the second largest banana producer in West Africa, contributing about 2.7 million tonnes annually. Together with partners, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has launched the ‘Stop Bunchy Top’ campaign in Nigeria to help farmers fight the BBTD infestation.

Training focuses on how they can identify the disease and produce virus-free planting materials. It also creates awareness among extension workers and policymakers about the danger of BBTD and control measures, including the need to plant clean banana suckers to prevent their fields from becoming infested.

iShamba is a mobile based platform that enables smallholder farmers to access real time agricultural and market price information and expert advice via SMS and a call centre. Funded by the TradeMark East Africa’s Challenge Fund and devised by Mediae Company Kenya, iShamba complements Mediae’s existing Shamba Shape Up programme that uses reality TV to give farmers the tools and knowledge to improve profitability and productivity sustainably.

iShamba offers a free subscription service to farmers, giving them market prices for two crops in the two closest markets to them; a weekly weather forecast for their area, including likely rainfall and agronomy tip text messages aligned to the season in the farmer’s specific region in Kenya. This helps them to know exactly when to harvest their crops and which pests and diseases to be on the look out for.

Farmers are also currently benefiting from ‘special offers’ and ‘discounts’ from key East African Community-based agri-product suppliers who are keen to work with iShamba to reach new customers.

How can we measure which technologies will have the most impact on our food supply? Until now, policymakers have struggled to make informed decisions on how to boost productivity in their regions in the most sustainable way.

The recent report  “Food Security in A World of Natural Resource Scarcity: The Role of Agricultural Technologies”  compiled by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seeks to answer these questions.

The report reviews 11 agricultural technologies ranging from traditional low-tech practices to more advanced technologies, such as no-till agriculture, heat-tolerant varieties and rainwater harvesting. The report finds that different regions will need different technologies. For example, when the impact of drought tolerance is tested globally, it seems to have a low impact, as drought only affects some regions in some seasons and years. Combining multiple technologies (or ‘stacking’ them) can have an even greater impact. Adopting the three types of crop protection (against weeds, diseases and insects) together could reduce the number of food-insecure people by close to 9 per cent. An  online tool  has been developed to allow policymakers and researchers hands-on access to the results.

In 2013, CropLife Latin America formed a partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to train Honduran farmers in good agricultural practices. The aim was to help lift 108,000 rural Hondurans out of extreme poverty by teaching farmers how to protect their crops from pests and disease.

AHSAFE-Honduras (the national member of CropLife Latin America) trained 120 USAID field officers on good agricultural practices and integrated pest management. The field officers in turn have trained more than 30,000 Honduran farmers. These farmers have been able to tackle pests and disease to improve the yield and quality of their crops and they are now earning higher incomes and enjoying a better quality of life. The project helped Emiliano Domínguez, a small-scale Honduran farmer, lift his family out of a life of poverty. He has been able to pay for a new house for his family of five and he has increased the amount of land he farms six times over.

The work in Honduras illustrates how public-private partnerships and good agricultural practices can address hunger and poverty around the world.

Rice production is not keeping up with demand in Africa. Changing diets, and rapid population growth mean that cultivation of this staple crop must dramatically increase its efficiency. To close the rice yield gap in Africa, AfricaRice, under the guidance of Dr. Kazuki Saito, has developed a decision support application (app) for providing African farmers with field-specific management guidelines called  ‘RiceAdvice.’  It is an interactive tool, which generates recommendations based on farmers’ answers to around 20 questions.

RiceAdvice can identify the best choice of fertilizers to be purchased based on nutrient requirement and fertilizer prices, and their amounts and application timing. In RiceAdvice, farmers can also select their own target yield level based on their budget. It has been tested in the Senegal River valley and Kano, Nigeria. Results show that RiceAdvice guidelines give more than one tonne per hectare of yield advantage compared with farmers’ practices.

Saito is also leading a team that has developed the first version of a yield gap map for rice in nine African countries in the  ‘Global Yield Gap Atlas’  website.

Seasonal rainfall forecasts can help farmers adapt to climate change and improve their resilience to climate shocks. The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is collaborating with the Senegalese National Meteorological Agency (ANACIM) to develop climate information services that are relevant to farmers on a broad scale. Farmers have been involved in every step of the process, helping meteorologists and other specialists package and communicate climate information.

As of August 2015, seasonal forecasts are transmitted nationwide through 82 rural community radio stations and SMS, potentially reaching 7.4 million rural people across Senegal.

Receiving climate information is one thing, but putting it into practice is another. In the beginning, some farmers were reluctant to join the project, as they were very accustomed to basing their actions only on their own know-how.

However, as the project was willing to integrate local knowledge into the climate information disseminated, these farmers became less resistant. Today, farmers are no longer content to wait for climate information, but go in search of it.

Often in Dalung, Ghana, the cold winter winds chase people inside in the evening. But when they have the chance to watch a television screen that teaches better ways to farm, a crowd of 200 villagers gathers in the thoroughfare. They lean in to hear a message that challenges all they know about rice farming and how to grow more than ever.

This is one of several ways IFDC’s Feed the Future Ghana Agriculture Technology Transfer project (ATT) reaches rural farmers through media-based extension. These methods inform farmers quickly and in a cost-effective way. In Dalung, farmers learned about new technology through public video screenings, held on mobile “video vans.” ATT focuses on producing and curating content that appeals to all demographics of farmers. The project helped produce a reality show, “Kuapa,” that promotes good agricultural practices and is aired on Ghana’s most popular TV network.

Elsewhere, the project collaborated with Farm Radio International (FRI) to host programs designed to benefit small-scale farmers. This program implements an Integrated Voice Response System to provide on-demand assistance to farmers who desire to learn more on their own time, and in their own language.

Together these initiatives are estimated to have reached more than 1 million smallholder farmers.

Improved Inputs

The quality, availability and proper use of agricultural inputs is at the heart of agricultural production and sustainability.

The crops that we grow today have been bred over the past ten thousand years to be quite distinct from their wild ancestors. Maize, for instance, has  evolved from  a species called teosinte, which is native to Mesoamerica. Similarly, modern wheat is the result of farmers in the Near East  selecting for  mutations which resulted from the natural crossing of different species of wild grass.

(Photo credits:  John Doebley ;  LaSalle )

Farmers today are faced with a changing climate, which demands seeds that can cope with increased incidents of droughts, heatwaves, floods and elevated salinity levels. This is happening while arable land per capita is ever decreasing, which compels farmers to maximize harvests on existing land.

To do this, the right inputs need to be used in the right amount and at the right time, in the right location. This is called the 4Rs, and is an integrated part of best management practices for improved and more efficient fertilizer application. For example, in more developed countries, global positioning systems (GPS) are helping farmers to track their use of fertilizer and match it very precisely to various soil types on their farm. It can also help them to identify potential pest or disease outbreaks.

Without pesticides and other pest controls, an  estimated 70% of the world’s crop might be lost , rather than 42% today. This would require substantially more cropland being brought into production to make up for this loss.

Rice dies within days of being completely submerged, resulting in total crop loss. In Asia, where most of the world’s rice is grown, about 20 million hectares of rice land is prone to flooding. In India and Bangladesh alone, more than five million hectares of rice field are flooded during most of the planting seasons, which severely damages food supplies and farmer incomes.

In response, scientists have developed a “flood tolerant” rice variety that can withstand being submerged for two weeks. Scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) scoured rice’s rich diversity for a gene that gives flood tolerance. After the gene (called SUB1) was found, it was bred conventionally into popularly grown rice varieties in rice-growing countries in Asia.

Several varieties with this “scuba” gene were released to India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Lao PDR, and Nepal. Farmer Nakanti Subbarao of Andhra Pradesh, India, was one of the first to adopt Swarna-Sub1 in his community. After seeing that he recovered 70 per cent of this rice after three weeks of flooding, he distributed Swarna-Sub1 seeds to his fellow farmers in Maruteru, which led to coverage of 800 ha in his village, and its nearby areas during the wet season of 2009.

Scuba rice is spreading fast in several countries over the last few years, and currently grown by more than five million farmers in Asia.

In Bangladesh about 60 per cent of the population eats fish at least every other day. Just as a nutritious diet is essential for our own healthy growth and development, the quality of feed given to farmed fish directly influences how fast and large they grow—in turn impacting the yield and farmer profits.

Yet it can be expensive and difficult to access quality feed. WorldFish, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is working on the Aquaculture for Income and Nutrition (AIN) project in Bangladesh, training farmers to make their own fish feed from subsidized feed mills.

Since January 2014, AIN has established 62 feed mills and trained 430 farmers in feed production. Fish are now growing faster, and as growing feed is cheaper than buying it, fish farmers are enjoying a better income.

In a country where more than a third of the population lives below the poverty line, AIN is improving the productivity of household and commercial fish farms to help secure income and nutrition for rural farmers and their families.

In a country often referred to as the “pearl of Africa”, one crop—orange sweet potato (OSP)—has become a real gem for Ugandan farmers and their households. Bred conventionally through a process known as biofortification, OSP packs enough vitamin A to provide a child with a full daily dose. In Uganda, one-third of all children under five lack enough vitamin A, contributing to 29,000 deaths each year.

Diarrhoea is one of the leading causes of child mortality in Africa, but a recent study has shown that OSP can help children ward off or reduce the duration of the disease.

As their children enjoy the nutritional and health benefits of OSP, Ugandan farmers are realizing other gains from the crop, too; OSP is high yielding, early maturing, and drought tolerant, giving farmers good harvests and an additional way to make a living.

To date, nearly 300,000 Ugandan farming households are growing and consuming OSP in a project run by HarvestPlus. With demand for the crop continuing to rise, HarvestPlus and the Government of Uganda are working together to scale up nationally.

In 2005, a new strain of rust disease devastated lentil fields in Ethiopia. The local variety of seeds used by the farmers had little resistance to the new disease caused by unusual weather, a growing problem with climate change. Nearly 90 per cent of the farmers lost their produce.

In response, the Ethiopian government with the help of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) stepped up efforts to improve legume varieties, with support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the government of Netherlands. ICARDA provided improved germplasm and varieties of lentils, chickpeas and faba beans for testing on farmers fields. The new varieties were first tested by the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) for adaptability to the local environment, and after crossbreeding with local varieties, those with the highest yield potential were released.

Today, 20 per cent of Ethiopian farmers grow improved lentil varieties from ICARDA’s project, and legumes are now becoming popular. Apart from boosting yields, these crops are making soils healthier and reducing their expenses on fertilizers.

Legumes, being rich in protein and essential minerals such as zinc, also enrich the diets and nutrition of farmers and their families.

Both water and fertilizers play a critical role in agricultural production – in fact, each depends on the other. Fertilizer’s influence on yield depends on the water available to crops, and water’s impact on yield depends on nutrients’ availability to crops.

This presents a significant challenge for countries that have limited, or erratic rainfall, and/or poor access to fertilizers. Traditionally, approaches to boost production in dry regions have focused on individual interventions such as fertilizer use, or water conservation measures. But scientific trials have discovered that approaches that integrate both fertilizer and water use are much more effective.

For example, in the Tadla region of Morocco, laser-assisted land levelling, that reduces water runoff after rainfall, has resulted in both saving 20 per cent more water, and increasing crop yields by 30 per cent. Tiered ridges that capture rainwater have a similar effect: sorghum grain yields at on-farm locations in Burkina Faso were higher with the combination of fertilizer and tied ridges than with either fertilizer or tied ridges alone.

Agronomists at the International Fertilizer Industry Association, together with partners, have produced a scientific book that reviews the latest knowledge on plant nutrition and water management that can optimize water productivity and fertilizer use efficiency and effectiveness.

‘Resilience’  describes  whether a farmer (and her farm) is able to withstand or recover from stresses and shocks. ‘Stresses’ are regular, sometimes continuous, relatively small and predictable disturbances (e.g. lack of access to inputs, a declining natural resource base, climate change and poverty) while ‘shocks’ are irregular, relatively large and unpredictable (e.g. floods, droughts, heatwaves and price volatility).

For farmers to be resilient, they must be able to bounce back from these challenges and achieve previous levels of growth – rather than suffer from reduced yields over time or even worse, a collapse in their production. Climate change already poses a risk, especially to smallholder farmers in the developing world.

Can farmers be supported to help predict these stresses and shocks? Can they be helped to prevent them, buffer themselves or fight against their negative impacts? And can they adapt in ways that make them even better off and more knowledgeable as a result?

According to the government of Ethiopia, 8.2 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance due to the current drought, coupled with successive failed seasons. El Niño weather conditions and rain failure are resulting in crop harvest loss, livestock death and declining productivity, putting over 400,000 people under emergency support needs. Despite this gloomy background, districts where World Vision has implemented Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) are exhibiting greater resilience. FMNR means helping naturally occurring trees to return to the landscape to help to keep the soil from washing away, to shade crops and to help the land to hold water.

Compared to the adjacent districts, agricultural production of the households that applied FMNR have largely been unaffected due to high moisture retention in their soils. Rivers and hand-dug wells have sufficient water despite reduced precipitation. Income from agricultural production has increased by more than double. Fodder for livestock, wood supply, and a stable microclimate all remain intact.

Furthermore, revenues from carbon credits that farmers have earned for planting more trees cover expenses such as school fees, medication and the purchase of improved seeds, thus safeguarding the wellbeing of families. The observed impact in Ethiopia clearly shows the potential for FMNR to serve as insurance against climate change induced shocks and stresses.

Back in the 1950s, Latin America and the Caribbean experienced one of the most devastating plant disease epidemics in history. The fungus, Panama disease, wiped out large production areas of Gros Michel, the export banana variety. This fungus still remains in the soil, and threatens the livelihood and food security of millions of smallholder farmers.

Bioversity International scientists, in collaboration with partners, have been working with 18 producers in the area of Turrialba, Costa Rica, and Tola, Nicaragua, helping them to become more resilient to Panama disease. Workshops were carried out to teach farmers how to recognise the disease, and stop it spreading. Good agricultural practices were promoted, such as using disease-free planting materials, as well as organic matter application and soil health-oriented fertilization. As a result of the interventions, farmers significantly improved their knowledge about Panama disease and management. They have also shared their experiences with neighbours through group training events, farmer field days and informal exchange.

Farmers now have a toolbox of validated practices for enhanced soil health and management of Panama disease in bananas, as a strategy for protecting their livelihoods.

In Ethiopia, an estimated 12-15 million livestock keepers live in the dry, low rangelands that cover most of the country. These rangelands have huge untapped potential, but drought, unsuitable farming practices and overgrazing have left the land in poor condition, which in turn has impacted the health, condition and value of livestock. Men, who are typically responsible for livestock production, are moving further afield in search of resources, taking them away for longer and increasing risks to their herds of disease and starvation. This affects household incomes, and results in distress sales or consumption of livestock during the hunger period, leaving many households unable to restock herds and lacking savings to invest in alternative incomes.

Farm Africa is working with partners to find more sustainable ways to use available grass and water, and to improve pasture quality. This process can be difficult to measure, as typically the areas in question are very large and remote.

The RaVeN monitoring tool under development by  LTS International  as part of this effort, aims to address this problem. This new tool uses freely available optical and radar satellite data in combination with meteorological data to measure the “greenness” of an area at different points in time, and therefore improve information on what good quality pasture is available for pastoralists to use for grazing their herds.

A new initiative being pioneered by scientists at the International Water Management Institute is channelling surplus surface water from flood‐prone rivers, to a modified village pond. Brick structures in the pond allow the water to flow swiftly down below ground, where they infiltrate the local aquifer. This water can then be pumped back up again during the dry season so that farmers can maintain or intensify their crop production.

Putting this into practice will save on the large funds spent each year on relief and restoration efforts of flood victims and on subsidies for groundwater extraction during the non‐rainy season.

With floods being a common occurrence across the Ganga basin, researchers hope that the scaling up of this intervention would help in effectively protecting lives and assets downstream, boosting agricultural productivity and improving resilience to climate shocks at the river basin scale. This will be especially important to help communities deal with climate change which is likely to bring ever more variability in water supply and rainfall.

Planting fruit trees is not a new practice in Central Viet Nam. Local species of pomelo and orange were once popular in home gardens and known for their special flavour. But as focus shifted towards extracting resources from the nearby forests, these fruit-bearing trees were slowly forgotten. But in the last decade, declining soil and water quantity, reduced river flow, and drought have forced farmers to seek alternatives. Tree planting in home gardens and sloping lands provides one such solution.

The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), in collaboration with partners and local people has established 12 agroforestry systems in home gardens and sloping land in three villages. The systems combine trees, annual crops and fodder grass. Pomelo and orange trees are planted amid annual crops, such as beans, peanut, sweet potato, maize and guinea fodder grass.

Mixed systems are not only more resistant to climate-related hazards but recent scientific findings show that local people residing in areas with diversified agricultural or forest products are also healthier owing to more nutritionally diverse diets.

Market Access

Market access allows farmers to buy the inputs they need such as improved seeds and fertilizers, and also to bring their crops, livestock and fish to market to earn a living.

Millions of smallholder famers live in remote areas, and are often isolated from market opportunities. Innovations in connecting these farmers to market are happening in many ways – resulting from social, technical and scientific advances. These advances help farmers find and share up-to-date market pricing information; protect and add value to their harvests; invest in their business; reduce and share risk; and access finance and training.

These innovations can be used and accelerated by actors all across the agricultural value chain to reduce transaction costs and risk while helping to give farmers equal access to the opportunities that exist through trade.

In Cambodia, traditional wood-burning stoves used to smoke freshwater fish typically result in low profits and emissions harmful to the environment. To improve this process and fetch higher prices from buyers, many young women engaged in this livelihood are taking part in the Cambodia HARVEST programme, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), that provides a new, fuel-efficient alternative. Eco-friendly stoves designed by the programme use 30 per cent less wood while smoking fish 15 per cent faster than conventional models. The end product is of a higher quality and ensures greater market access.

All 289 of the programme’s fish processors utilize these new stoves. Kry Sokly, a fish processor in in Kampong Prak village, has increased her family’s annual income by 75 per cent, from $1,000 to $1,750. Not only has the new stove contributed to this success, but Kry also took part in trainings on entrepreneurship and hygiene within her producer/savings group. These organizations, formed by Cambodia HARVEST as another way to connect fish processors to the market, offer an opportunity for women to come together for greater knowledge exchange. Moreover, members contribute money into a pool from which they can borrow when needed at interest rates lower than commercial lenders without stipulations on how they use the money.

In the Republic of Georgia, the agriculture sector is booming. Producers are required to adapt and utilise new technologies to keep up with both local and international market demand.

The company Herbia had run a consolidation centre, where local farmers could bring their produce to market for several years, as well as a three-hectare greenhouse for culinary production. Yet the company was in need of new technologies to increase its sales and market share, so applied to the USAID Restoring Efficiency to Agriculture Production (REAP) matching grant programme, and established a new refrigerated warehouse with two modern packing lines.

This new equipment quickly enabled Herbia to purchase more goods from smallholders and to launch a new product line that provides whole vegetables for ready-made salads. Additionally, REAP assisted Herbia in rebranding including the development of a new logo and packaging.

The new brand launched in April 2015 in more than 80 Tbilisi supermarkets, resulting in an immediate rise in sales of more than 20 per cent. The new equipment, coupled with Herbia’s rebrand, has produced 16 new jobs (including nine for women), generated more than U.S. $222,690 in sales, and enabled the purchase of more than 44MT of new herbs and vegetables from more than 150 new farmers.

Hidden in the conflict-ridden borderlands of Colombia and Ecuador, farmers have been growing exceptional quality coffee beans, but have remained largely disconnected from gourmet coffee markets. Scientists at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) joined forces with Catholic Relief Services last year, to analyse the coffee trade and find out how coffee farmers in the Nariño region could be linked to these more lucrative markets.

It was soon discovered that buyers from big coffee brands were purchasing Nariño’s coffee based on sight and not a taste test. Farmers were receiving a flat rate for any coffee beans considered to score above 85 out of 100, even though many, when tasted, could actually reach the high 90s. A “cupping” session was arranged by the project, to teach farmers about the rigorous tasting process that could set their coffees apart and help them earn much higher financial rewards.

In its first year, the project enabled around 100 farmers to break into the gourmet coffee market. This year they are up to around 550 and that number is likely to rise.

Traditional business model analysis dictates that the agricultural sector across Africa represents substantial risk. So it is no surprise that existing financial institutions have only met 1 per cent of the overall demand for credit in agriculture. Umati Capital focuses on data and technology, to help small to medium sized enterprises and agribusinesses unlock cash for immediate growth but also achieve operational efficiencies for sustained growth.

Umati Capital has been working closely with one of the leading fair-trade and organic certified Kenyan exporters of macadamia and cashew nuts. Before Umati Capital, the exporter painstakingly procured raw nuts from 60,000 smallholder farmers in remote areas across Kenya using manual and paper-based processes, resulting in errors and delayed payments to the farmers.

Umati Capital helped the exporter by providing invoice discounting, and automating the exporter’s supply chain processes, enabling on-time payments for the farmers.

As a result, the exporter increased purchases from farmers by 50 per cent and improved efficiencies in procurement by 90 per cent.

The MilkIT innovation platform has helped women stuggling to make ends meet in the Himalayan hills of Northern India to generate a regular income from milk from their cows.

Beginning in early 2013, the MilkIT project made efforts to unite dairy development actors, researchers and farmers, to improve access to dairy markets and improved dairy feeds, Now, more than 800 households are selling their milk at higher prices due to collective marketing by self-help group-based cooperatives and closer links to the state cooperative, with subsidies provided to those transporting milk from distant villages to markets.

Livestock keepers have been able to replace unproductive stock with higher yielding animals due to credit support provided by development. Simple feed innovations such as feed troughs, forage choppers suited to women’s needs, adoption of improved forage varieties and dual-purpose crops that act as feed and food, has helped to reduce women’s labour while increasing the availability of fodder.

An impact study conducted in November 2014 showed that families participating in this innovation platform earned five times more income from their dairy animals than non-participants in one year.

PHOTO CREDITS: ©2017 CIAT/NEIL PALMER, ©2021 CIAT/JUAN PABLO MARIN GARCÍA, YUSUF AHMAD (ICRAF), ©2016CIAT/GEORGINASMITH, DEVASHREE NAYAK (ICRAF), ©2009CIAT/NEILPALMER, GEORGINA SMITH (CIAT), S. STORR (CIMMYT), GUILHEM ALANDRY, P. SAVADOGO (ICRAF), NEIL PALMER (CIAT), OLIVIER GIRARD (CIFOR), THOMAS LUMPKIN (CIMMYT)

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Works Cited

• Bonessi, Dominique. “GMO Foods Pose Greater Risk to Agriculture than Human Health, Experts Say.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 17 May 2016, www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/gmo-foods-pose-greater-risk-to-agriculture-than-human-health-experts-say.
• Buiatti, M, et al. “The Application of GMOs in Agriculture and in Food Production for a Better Nutrition: Two Different Scientific Points of View.” Genes & Nutrition, Springer-Verlag, May 2013, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639326/.
• “Introduction.” Genetically Modified Organisms, sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/PH/GMOs/GMOs_print.html.
• Raman, Ruchir. “The Impact of Genetically Modified (GM) Crops in Modern Agriculture: A Review.” Taylor & Francis, 28 June 2017, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645698.2017.1413522.
• “The Science and Technology of Agriculture.” IPTV, 26 Oct. 2018, www.iptv.org/iowapathways/mypath/science-and-technology-agriculture.

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Home » Education » Essay on Science and Technology in Agriculture

Essay on Science and Technology in Agriculture

An essay on science and technology in agriculture is an essay that explores and explains the effects science has on society, particularly through the application of scientific principles. Essays on science and technology in agriculture generally deal with the relationship between agriculture and other science-based endeavors.

Science and technology in agriculture are not always discussed and the topics can range from how farmers can use new agricultural technologies to decrease their reliance on petroleum to how scientists have found a way to develop an agricultural system that helps to preserve and protect the environment. The topics may also include environmental impacts and what effect they have on agriculture. Some topics even discuss what impact future technological advancements may have on agriculture.

One thing that most essays on science and technology in agriculture do not address is the impact science has on society. A topic that would be more appropriate for a thesis is, for instance, how science is influencing society through the creation of new technology.

Science and technology in agriculture are important because they affect everyone and the ways they are affecting society is what determines the ultimate impact that science has on the world. Scientific research has helped to provide an accurate understanding of how the world works and what effects science can have on society. This information is used to help guide people in making important decisions, especially regarding the environment.

However, research studies cannot determine the long-term effects of science and technology on society or how it will affect the future. Because there are no experiments or scientific trials, it is impossible to say whether or not science and technology will actually affect society.

We all have our own opinions on this and what has been said may differ from person to person. However, the reality is that we all agree that the changes that science and technology have given us will change the world and the lives of our children. If science is used to improve the world then it is a positive thing and if it is used for evil reasons then it is a negative thing.

However, science and technology have a positive impact because it can reduce the amount of pollution in the world and increase the amount of food available to us. There are many ways that this has improved our lives and in some cases it has made it impossible to live without modern technologies. Scientists can help farmers grow food that is healthier for us and reduce the amount of pesticides that are sprayed on our crops.

Science and technology can be an excellent asset to society and there are many ways to help society move forward. However, no matter how good a person’s intentions, they still need to write an essay on science and technology in agriculture if they want their paper to be accepted by the academic community.

An important factor in determining if your essay on science and technology in agriculture will be accepted or not is by looking at its length. If you have an essay that is too long then you will not have much chance of getting it accepted.

Another important factor in getting accepted is by showing examples of how you have applied the information in your essay. Using examples is important because it helps demonstrate what the topic is all about and how well you are able to explain the concepts. You also need to include references that demonstrate how the information was used and where they are found. By using examples you show that you know what you are talking about and what you are stating is factual information.

Writing an essay on science and technology in agriculture is something that is not easy. It takes patience and work to get it right but it can be done if you stick with it. The last thing that you want to do is submit an essay on this subject and then give up after a few attempts because it was too hard or you did not understand the concepts. Always keep in mind that your essay is a reflection on what you have written and it should be easy to understand.

No matter what type of essay you choose to write you should use your own knowledge and experience to write it. Do not use someone else’s information because it might take away from your ability to write a quality essay. You will not get better if you take the information and reword it. Do not put in information that you cannot remember or do without any reference at all.

Essay About How Technology Has Changed Our Lives

The Tech Essay

Editorial of the Day: Role of Technology in Agriculture (NITI Aayog)

Recently NITI Aayog released a report on “Building agritech ecosystem for the global south” that highlights the potential of agritech startups in transforming the agriculture sector and improving

Table of Contents

Context: Recently NITI Aayog released a report on “Building agritech ecosystem for the global south” that highlights the potential of agritech startups in transforming the agriculture sector and improving the livelihoods of farmers.

Role of Technology in Agriculture Background

Role of Technology in Agriculture:

The role of technology in agriculture has been crucial and has revolutionized the industry in many ways.

• Improved crop yields: Technology has enabled farmers to increase their yields by using advanced tools and techniques such as precision agriculture, which involves the use of sensors, drones, and GPS to monitor crop growth and optimize inputs such as water, fertilizer, and pesticides.
• Enhancing Crop Quality: Techniques such as Genetic engineering has made it possible to introduce certain strains into other genes of crops or animals. Such engineering boosts the resistance of the crops to pests (e.g. Bt Cotton) and droughts.
• Sustainable farming practices: Technology can help farmers adopt sustainable farming practices, reduce their carbon footprint, and prevent soil degradation. For example, precision agriculture can reduce the amount of chemicals needed to grow crops, while crop rotation and cover cropping can improve soil health.
• Efficient use of resources: Technology can help farmers make the most of their resources by reducing waste and improving efficiency. For example, using sensors to monitor soil moisture and weather conditions can help farmers optimize irrigation and reduce water usage.
• Smart supply chain management: Technology can help farmers connect with buyers and streamline their supply chains, reducing waste and improving profitability. For example, eNAM is an online platform that connects farmers with buyers, helping to reduce the role of intermediaries and improve transparency in pricing.
• Improved quality and safety: Technology can help farmers improve the quality and safety of their products by using tools such as computer vision and deep learning to monitor and grade produce.
• Additionally, technology can also provide farmers with access to information, resources, and markets. For example, mobile apps and online platforms can provide farmers with weather forecasts, market prices, and information on best farming practices.
• This can help them make informed decisions about their crops thereby preventing crop damage and failure.
• Prevents Rural Exodus: technology can also help to reduce the drudgery of farm work, making it more appealing to younger generations who may have otherwise sought employment in other sectors. This can help to retain young people in rural areas and prevent the rural exodus to urban areas.

Challenges in Deploying Technology in Indian Agriculture:

There have been several challenges in deploying technology in agriculture in India, including:

• Education and Training Related: The lack of knowledge and inadequate skills among farmers regarding the use of technology is a significant challenge.
• Technology and Infrastructure: Poor infrastructure, lack of storage, and inadequate transport facilities pose significant challenges in deploying technology in agriculture.
• Economic and Policy Issues: The lack of money, access to credit, and limited access to bank loans make it difficult for farmers to invest in new technologies. Additionally, government policies related to agricultural technology are not always supportive, which further limits the adoption of new technology.
• Climate vulnerability & Environmental Issues: India is vulnerable to climate change, and farmers face challenges related to poor soils, soil fertility, unreliable rainfall, and natural disasters such as floods, frost, and hailstorms. These challenges can limit the effectiveness of agricultural technologies.
• Psycho-Social Issues: Many workers have no interest in agriculture, and farm work is not always preferred over self-reliance projects or other types of work. Additionally, farm jobs are often time-consuming, which can make it difficult for farmers to adopt new technologies that require significant time investments.

Decoding the Editorial

Key Highlights of the Report:

Agritech Challenge:

• The report discusses the Agritech Challenge which is a collaborative initiative between the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) in India, and partner countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and Zambia.
• It is aimed at promoting cross-border partnerships and knowledge sharing between agritech startups and incubators in different countries, primarily in emerging economies across Asia and Africa.
• The main objective of the challenge is to address developmental challenges in the agriculture sector, which is critical to the economies of these countries and employs a significant proportion of their population.
• It seeks to create opportunities for business collaborations and knowledge sharing, supported by sustainable investments.
• It aims to drive south-south collaboration by identifying three broad categories of challenges in the agriculture sector, namely low productivity, poor risk resilience, and inefficient supply chain , and seeks to support startups that offer solutions relevant to these challenges.
• The selected agritech startups will work to improve agriculture productivity, build resilience against climate change and natural hazard-induced shocks, and improve supply chain efficiency and transparency.

AgriTech Landscape in India:

• The agritech sector in India has been growing rapidly in recent years , driven by a combination of factors including increasing smartphone and internet penetration , rising agricultural productivity, and government initiatives to promote digital agriculture.
• According to a report by NASSCOM and Agribusiness Intelligence, the Indian agritech market was valued at USD 24 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 30 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 12%.
• However, the market penetration of agritech in India is still relatively low, at around 1%, indicating significant untapped potential.
• The supply chain and farm management segments are expected to be the key drivers of growth in the Indian agritech landscape, with a focus on improving efficiency, reducing waste, and increasing profitability for farmers and other stakeholders.
• There are many agritech startups operating in India across various segments, including precision agriculture, supply chain management , farm management, and market linkages.
• Some of the notable players in the Indian agritech ecosystem include AgNext, Ninjacart, DeHaat, CropIn, and AgroStar, among others.
• The Indian government has also launched several initiatives to promote the growth of the agritech sector, such as the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, the eNAM platform for online trading of agricultural commodities, and the Kisan Credit Card scheme for farmers.

Challenges for Agritech Startups:

• High Cost of Infrastructure and Devices : The Agritech companies depend on agriculture infrastructure or tools like IoT devices, farm machinery, high-resolution satellite imageries, and IT infrastructure. However, all these infrastructures are costly and require substantial upfront investments. Therefore, the absence of such infrastructures prohibits the entry of the Agritech companies in those geographies or sub-sector.
• There has been a significant increase in mobile internet coverage, but the usage gap remains a challenge in the adoption of agritech solutions.
• The primary reason for the high usage gap in rural areas is that people are unaware of or understand the mobile internet and its benefits.
• The users also have a low level of literacy and digital skills.
• Other reasons are the affordability of a smartphone or service fees
• Connecting with farmers is a significant challenge for Agritech start-ups due to fragmented landholding, diverse geographies, and farmers’ trust issues.
• Farmers do not trust new companies and are averse to doing any transaction.
• The direct connection with the farmer is often the cheapest, but some farm-level issues do not support this model, so start-ups must depend on the B2B2C model.
• Most Agritech start-ups are data-driven and require the latest data to improve their software and effectively serve end-users.
• In the context of India, the largest repository of data is the government. These data are related to land records, weather data, crop yield, and price.
• However, there is inadequate farm and farmer-level data available, which hinders Agritech start-ups’ growth and development.

Recommendations:

The report recommends few steps to improve the scaling up of agritech start-ups and ensure food security:

• Improving last-mile connectivity: The government needs to build the capacity of local institutions like FPOs or cooperatives to ensure that all smallholders can benefit from the services and products of agritech start-ups.
• Access to public data: The government should ensure that agritech start-ups have access to quality data related to farmers, land records, financial health, weather reports, meteorological data, market, price, and mandi data.
• Promoting local level infrastructure for farm-level processing: The government should promote the creation of local agriculture-related infrastructures by incentivising and providing financing from formal financial institutions. It will boost the farmers’ income and ensure the scalability and sustainability of agritech start-ups.
• Digitalisation of licensing regime: Creating transparency around the licensing process by digitising the entire process will help agritech start-ups increase access to information to the smallholders.
• State-specific AgriTech policy to promote agriculture-based start-ups: A distinct agritech start-up policy will go a long way in promoting and facilitating many such start-ups. It will also help the government departments work around the issues related to sharing of data, usage of data, and privacy issues by the private firms.

Beyond the Editorial

Government Initiatives:

• AgriStack: The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has planned creating ‘AgriStack’ – a collection of technology-based interventions in agriculture.
• Digital Agriculture Mission: This has been initiated for 2021 -2025 by the government for projects based on new technologies like artificial intelligence, block chain, remote sensing and GIS technology, use of drones and robots etc.
• Unified Farmer Service Platform (UFSP): UFSP is a combination of Core Infrastructure, Data, Applications and Tools that enable seamless interoperability of various public and private IT systems in the agriculture ecosystem across the country.
• National e-Governance Plan in Agriculture (NeGP-A): A Centrally Sponsored Scheme, it was initially launched in 2010-11 in 7 pilot States, which aims to achieve rapid development in India through use of ICT for timely access to agriculture-related information to the farmers.
• Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanization (SMAM): Under this Scheme, subsidies are provided for the purchase of various types of agricultural equipment and machinery.
• Other Digital Initiatives: Kisan Call Centres, Kisan Suvidha App, Agri Market App, Soil Health Card (SHC) Portal, etc.

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Essay on Science and Technology for Students and Children

500+ words essay on science and technology.

Essay on Science and Technology: Science and technology are important parts of our day to day life. We get up in the morning from the ringing of our alarm clocks and go to bed at night after switching our lights off. All these luxuries that we are able to afford are a resultant of science and technology . Most importantly, how we can do all this in a short time are because of the advancement of science and technology only. It is hard to imagine our life now without science and technology. Indeed our existence itself depends on it now. Every day new technologies are coming up which are making human life easier and more comfortable. Thus, we live in an era of science and technology.

Essentially, Science and Technology have introduced us to the establishment of modern civilization . This development contributes greatly to almost every aspect of our daily life. Hence, people get the chance to enjoy these results, which make our lives more relaxed and pleasurable.

Benefits of Science and Technology

If we think about it, there are numerous benefits of science and technology. They range from the little things to the big ones. For instance, the morning paper which we read that delivers us reliable information is a result of scientific progress. In addition, the electrical devices without which life is hard to imagine like a refrigerator, AC, microwave and more are a result of technological advancement.

Furthermore, if we look at the transport scenario, we notice how science and technology play a major role here as well. We can quickly reach the other part of the earth within hours, all thanks to advancing technology.

In addition, science and technology have enabled man to look further than our planet. The discovery of new planets and the establishment of satellites in space is because of the very same science and technology. Similarly, science and technology have also made an impact on the medical and agricultural fields. The various cures being discovered for diseases have saved millions of lives through science. Moreover, technology has enhanced the production of different crops benefitting the farmers largely.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

India and Science and Technology

Ever since British rule, India has been in talks all over the world. After gaining independence, it is science and technology which helped India advance through times. Now, it has become an essential source of creative and foundational scientific developments all over the world. In other words, all the incredible scientific and technological advancements of our country have enhanced the Indian economy.

Looking at the most recent achievement, India successfully launched Chandrayaan 2. This lunar exploration of India has earned critical acclaim from all over the world. Once again, this achievement was made possible due to science and technology.

In conclusion, we must admit that science and technology have led human civilization to achieve perfection in living. However, we must utilize everything in wise perspectives and to limited extents. Misuse of science and technology can produce harmful consequences. Therefore, we must monitor the use and be wise in our actions.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [{ “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “List some benefits of science and technology.”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Science and Technology helps us to function daily comfortably. It has given us railway systems, TV, refrigerator, internet and more.” } }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “Name the most recent achievement of India with the help of science and technology.”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”:”India most recently launched Chandrayaan 2 successfully. This lunar exploration helped India make a distinctive place amongst the other developed countries.”} }] }

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Agriculture

Make Your Note

Adoption of Modern Technology in Agriculture

• 04 Apr 2022
• GS Paper - 3
• Government Policies & Interventions
• E-Technology in the Aid of Farmers

For Prelims : IDEA, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, block chain, remote sensing, GIS technology, use of drones, SMAM, Kisan Call Centres, Kisan Suvidha App, Agri Market App.

For Mains: E-Technology in the Aid of Farmers

Why in News?

Recently, the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare in a written reply in Rajya Sabha informed about the various initiatives taken by the government for adopting technology in Agriculture.

• In 2021, a consultation paper on the India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA) from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (MoA&FW) was released, which talks about a digital revolution in the agriculture sector.
• The adoption of modern technology depends on various factors such as socioeconomic conditions, geographical conditions, crop grown, irrigation facilities etc.

What is the importance of Technology in Agriculture?

• Technology in agriculture can be used in different aspects of agriculture such as the application of herbicide, pesticide, fertilizer, and improved seed.
• Presently, farmers are able to grow crops in areas where they were thought could not grow, but this is only possible through agricultural biotechnology.
• Such engineering boosts the resistance of the crops to pests (e.g. Bt Cotton) and droughts . Through technology, farmers are in a position to electrify every process for efficiency and improved production.

How using Technology can be Beneficial in Agriculture?

• Increases agriculture productivity.
• Prevents soil degradation.
• Reduces chemical application in crop production.
• Efficient use of water resources.
• Disseminates modern farm practices to improve the quality, quantity and reduced cost of production.
• Changes the socio-economic status of farmers.

What are the Related Challenges?

• Lack of knowledge
• Inadequate skills
• Lack of improved skills
• Poor infrastructure
• Lack of storage
• Lack of transport
• Lack of Money
• Access to credit
• Lack of access to Bank Loans
• Poor soils,
• Soil fertility
• Unreliable rainfall
• Natural disasters such as floods, frost, hail storm
• Workers have no interest in agriculture, Farm works are not preferred over ipelegeng projects (self-reliance works), Farm jobs are time consuming.

What are the Steps taken by the Government in the Direction?

• AgriStack: The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has planned creating ‘AgriStack’ - a collection of technology-based interventions in agriculture.
• Digital Agriculture Mission: This has been initiated for 2021 -2025 by the government for projects based on new technologies like artificial intelligence , block chain , remote sensing and GIS technology , use of drones and robots etc.
• Unified Farmer Service Platform (UFSP): UFSP is a combination of Core Infrastructure, Data, Applications and Tools that enable seamless interoperability of various public and private IT systems in the agriculture ecosystem across the country.
• In 2014-15, the scheme was further extended for all the remaining States and 2 UTs.
• Under this Scheme, subsidies are provided for purchase of various types of agricultural equipment and machinery.
• Other Digital Initiatives: Kisan Call Centres , Kisan Suvidha App , Agri Market App , Soil Health Card (SHC) Portal, etc.

Way Forward

• The use of technology has defined the 21 st century. As the world moves toward quantum computing, AI, big data, and other new technologies, India has a tremendous opportunity to reap the advantage of being an IT giant and revolutionize the farming sector. While the green revolution led to an increase in agricultural production, the IT revolution in Indian farming must be the next big step.
• There need to be immense efforts to improve the capacities of the farmers in India – at least until the educated young farmers replace the existing under-educated small and medium farmers.
• Technology in agriculture has the potential to truly lead India to be “Atmanirbhar Bharat” in all respects, and be less dependent on extraneous factors.

UPSC Civil Services Examination, Previous Year Questions (PYQs)

Q. Consider the following statements: (2017)

The nation-wide ‘Soil Health Card Scheme’ aims at

• expanding the cultivable area under irrigation.
• enabling the banks to assess the quantum of loans to be granted to farmers on the basis of soil quality.
• checking the overuse of fertilizers in farmlands.

Which of the above statements is/are correct?

(a) 1 and 2 only (b) 3 only (c) 2 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3

• Soil Health Card (SHC) is a GoI scheme promoted by the Department of Agriculture and Co-operation under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare. It is being implemented through the Department of Agriculture of all the State and Union Territory Governments.
• A SHC is meant to give each farmer, soil nutrient status of the holding and advise on the dosage of fertilizers and also the needed soil amendments, that should be applied to maintain soil health in the long run.
• The main aim behind the scheme is to find out the type of a particular soil and then provide ways in which farmers can improve it.

Source: PIB

The Impact of Groundnut Processing on Women's Economic Empowerment: A Qualitative Study

23 Pages Posted: 10 Sep 2024 Publication Status: Under Review

Bernice Wadei

Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

Ebenezer Owusu-Addo

National Ageing and Research Institute, Australia

Isaac Bonuedi

Thomas yeboah, independent, richard oblitei tetteh, ernestina antoh fredua, nathaniel mensah-odum.

There is currently a growing recognition of the vital role that women play as the backbone of agricultural and small-scale processing activities. The empowerment of women has also become a central focus of international development efforts, driven by the understanding that gender equality is not only a matter of human rights but also a catalyst for broader economic growth and sustainable development. Using a phenomenological research approach, with 42 qualitative interviews and 20 focus group discussions involving 161 respondents, this paper explores the multifaceted relationship between groundnut processing infrastructure and women's economic empowerment (WEE). Groundnut processing, a pivotal element of livelihoods in Northern Ghana, offers a unique lens through which to examine the transformative potential of economic activities on women's lives. Through a comprehensive data collection and analysis of qualitative interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs), this study unveils the nuanced dimensions of the lived experiences of the impact of processing infrastructure on WEE. The key themes that emerged from the study were access to income, input into decision-making processes, the ability to save, asset acquisition, enhanced freedom of movement, social recognition and improved self-worth, formation of group associations, and the overall improvement in general economic well-being. This research underscores the critical role of groundnut processing infrastructure in fostering WEE.

Keywords: Women's Economic Empowerment, Groundnut processing, Gender equality, Livelihoods

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Bernice Wadei (Contact Author)

Kwame nkrumah university of science and technology ( email ), national ageing and research institute, australia ( email ).

Faculty of Law Faculty of Law Kumasi, AK Ashanti Region +233 Ghana

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