The agricultural industry has progressed great distances since its humble beginnings. The latest agriculture technology advancements show how technology can help create eco-friendly food systems and improve global food security. Modern farmers are willing to embrace new techniques and inventions when they deliver results, so this trend is expected to continue. The development of agriculture has been greatly influenced by innovations from plows to milking machines. In light of this, here are seven cutting-edge technologies that have the potential to alter the agricultural landscape in the coming years drastically. We can now hasten harvest time, minimize crop losses on a large scale, and efficiently allocate farm resources thanks to modern farming techniques.
Farm Automation
In the coming years, automation will play an even more significant role in farming, which it already does to some extent. Farmers already use drones to monitor their crops, and cutting-edge sensors can pinpoint when to fertilize or water their fields. It is also possible to use these devices to monitor soil quality and prevent droughts from adversely affecting crops. Farmers will be able to concentrate more on other aspects of their businesses rather than manual labor tasks like watering, seeding, and harvesting due to the higher level of automation.
Soil and water sensors
Sensors for water and soil may be the technologies that have the most apparent impact right away. These sensors have three main advantages: reliability, discreteness, and reasonable price. Their affordability makes them suitable for small farms as well as having a lot of benefits. By measuring moisture and nitrogen levels, these sensors can allow the farm to determine when to water or fertilize without following a schedule. Thus, the farm is more economical and efficient due to better use of resources, while it is also more environmentally friendly due to water conservation and erosion reduction.
Big data and analytics
The idea of artificial intelligence is to apply human intelligence to a machine that receives instructions and produces clever work without human involvement. AI and ML can make a devastating contribution and profit from their tested data analysis and predictions. Farmer’s decisions regarding when to begin sowing and harvest, and how much seed to sow, how much water or fertilizer to use can be aided by big data and analytics. Farm data can be transformed into actionable insights using big data and analytics techniques.
Connecting technologies
Smart farming is not feasible without connectivity technologies such as 5G, LPWAN, rural broadband, or satellite-enabled communication. IoT devices, robots, and sensors can communicate quickly owing to 5G, making it easier for them to adopt. This makes it possible for farmers to more accurately monitor the data in real-time and take the necessary steps. Real-time field data exchange, essential for increasing accuracy, is made possible by high-speed internet using fiber optic cables. Connectivity technologies support IoT and other technologies, which ultimately work together to create connected farms.
Agricultural biotechnology
Crop yield is often lost due to pests and plant diseases. Agrochemicals are used in fields, but there are more environmentally friendly options. Contrarily, biotechnology in agriculture raises the caliber of livestock and crops. The identification of superior traits in plants is facilitated by scientific methods like cultivating plants, crossover, genetic engineering, and tissue culture. Genome editing technology called CRISPR-Cas9 enables high specificity of targets with increased speed and accuracy. It creates transgenic plants with the desired traits, such as high yield capacity, disease resistance, drought tolerance, and pest resistance. As a result, farm production is more profitable.
Precision agriculture
The amount of food produced per person has increased due to the growing world population. Water shortages have nevertheless resulted from this due to irrigation needs. Farmers are turning to precision agriculture to solve these problems because it can help them save time and money.
With the help of sensor technology, AI, GIS, and IoT, precision agriculture is a rapidly developing farm management system that gathers and analyses data about the soil, plants, and animals. It permits more precisely using inputs like water, fertilizer, nutrients from plants, herbicides, seeds, and labor. Contrary to conventional farming methods, precision farming employs a uniform approach over a wide area regardless of topography or soil quality variations.
Drone monitoring
It can be challenging to boost farm productivity while reducing expenses. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also called drones, assist farmers in efficiently getting past this inconvenience. Drones gather unprocessed data that can be converted into useful data for farm monitoring. Drones with cameras enable aerial photographs and mapping of both close-by and far-off fields. Precision agriculture is fueled by data that optimizes the application of seeds, water, fertilizer, and pesticides. Drones also make geofencing, grazing monitoring, and livestock tracking easier. They take pictures of fields while flying over them, from detailed visible-light pictures to multispectral imagery that aids in crop, soil, and field analysis.
Artificial intelligence
Using AI in agriculture enables farmers to be proactive by giving them real-time insights into the state of their fields. AI provides predictive insights for predicting weather information, crop yield, and prices, assisting farmers in making wise decisions. Farmers can get advice and suggestions from chatbots about input. The detection of anomalies and diseases in plants and livestock is automated by AI and ML algorithms. This makes it possible to detect problems quickly and take action if necessary. For advice on gene selection, biotechnology also uses ML algorithms. Farmers who are turned down for credit by banks can also easily access financing owing to AI’s alternative credit scoring system.
Internet of things
In conventional farming, crop field monitoring necessitates a lot of labor, physical equipment, time, and effort. IoT offers an alternative to these established techniques. An Internet of Things (IoT) device has one or more sensors that gather data and deliver accurate information in real-time through mobile applications or other channels. These sensors carry out numerous tasks, including plant and animal tracking, humidity and temperature of the soil sensing, and more. Additionally, IoT makes it possible for farms to be remotely monitored, which is more convenient for farmers. In addition, new irrigation systems automate water delivery to crops using IoT sensors. These include, among others, rain sensors, on-site soil moisture sensors, and evapotranspiration sensors.
Wrap up
Managing sustainable development and utilizing new technologies is challenging for the agricultural sector. If you’re a BSc Agriculture aspirant who wants to learn about the new and latest technological advancements in agriculture, you should first choose a top BSc agriculture college in Maharashtra. It will equip you with knowledge of basic and advanced theories of agriculture and the latest trends in the agricultural field. Sharadchandraji Pawar College of Agricultural Sciences is one of the best BSc agriculture colleges in Maharashtra, offering the best learning environment.