5 Factors Influencing Global Precision Ag Adoption Right Now

A few weeks ago, one of my salespeople in India told me about a very interesting virtual experience: A large collective of smallholder farmers had reached out to inquire about our services. However, due to COVID-19, our salesperson was unable to travel the 500 miles required to visit the group. He was quite despondent, because this group could have been a huge source of customers for him, especially for the current season.

As a last resort, he sent them a single WhatsApp message: he asked the farmers if they would meet on a Zoom call. Lo and behold, they said yes! In a few days, 20 farmers individually joined a Zoom conference call with him on their smartphones. Using Zoom, he was able to give the farmers live demos and guide them through the entire adoption and set up process.

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One of the biggest problems we have experienced in precision agriculture over the years is the low speed of adoption by farmers. From my experiences with growers on every inhabited continent, this issue is not just specific to any geography, but is global. Furthermore, data and the tools to use this data to engage in precision agriculture, have existed in one form or another for several years, so it is not simply a data availability issue.

There are several different reasons for slow adoption, which I will not go into depth in this article. Yet, changes in the recent months and years may have really brought about a paradigm shift in technology adoption by farmers. Until just a few months ago, we really struggled to do virtual demos and meetings with farmers. Now, it is not just possible but also the preferred method. This, along with a few other recent changes point to an increase in adoption speed globally for precision agriculture:

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1. Rural Internet Connectivity

Ever since the beginning of mobile telecommunications, rural areas have often been left behind because of their lower population densities. It often does not make financial sense for a telecommunications company to invest in cellular towers, which can cost more than $100,000 a tower, for areas without many customers. But that is changing, with decreases in the costs of hardware, and the introduction of new technologies.

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In many parts of the world, the cost of data has been falling precipitously over recent years. For example, in India, 1GB of data on a 4G connection costs just a few Rupees (a few cents in USD). Due to the oligopolistic nature of the U.S. telecom industry, prices are much higher in the U.S., but this is more of the exception rather than the rule globally. Furthermore, alternative technologies like TV white space internet (being rolled out by tech giants like Microsoft) and high-speed satellite internet (like SpaceX’s Starlink, almost operational in the U.S. and soon to be operational globally), are poised to dramatically improve connectivity in rural areas around the world and bring them on par with urban areas.

Once farmers have a good internet connection, a lot of digital precision agriculture tools become viable, whether they’re IoT sensors or smartphone apps performing calculations on the cloud.

2. Market Forces Leading to Farm Consolidations and Higher Value Crops

For decades, most farmers in established and developed agricultural markets of large countries like the U.S. have tended to focus on growing the highest value crops that their lands and climates are the most suited to growing. This focus has resulted in farm consolidations, as economies of scale also tend to increase profit margins further.

But this trend has not been adopted by the vast majority of farms globally, especially in developing countries. Until relatively recently, crop supply chains within and between many countries were not as connected. For example, Israel has historically focused on growing nearly every kind of crop completely within its country, despite its relative water scarcity. Similarly, in India, staple grains like rice and wheat are grown in nearly every part of the country to a certain extent, even though some regions are much more suited than others.

There is an even greater geographic dispersion in several parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where this trend can be seen even on a village level. Now, with strengthening supply chains, farmers are able to transition to crops and farming behaviors that will yield them higher profits, which they can also reinvest in newer technology. Although COVID-19 has collapsed many global supply chains, it may actually serve to further strengthen agricultural supply chains in the long run as many people come to recognize the economic significance of having strong and diverse supply chains throughout the food and agriculture industry.

3. Climate Change’s Effects Becoming More Pronounced

Over the last decade, we have begun to record many more extreme weather events around the globe, making the case for precision agriculture. California came out of its greatest recorded drought in 2016, followed by its wettest year ever recorded, but now there are signs that drought conditions may be the “new normal” for California going into the future.

Similarly, India has been observing greater deviations in monsoon rainfall on a yearly basis. In Africa, the situation is more dire with an increasing rate of desertification observed in the Sahel (along the southern edge of the Sahara). We’ve observed that during years of acute resource scarcity, precision agriculture transforms from being a vitamin to being a painkiller in the eyes of the farmer, and with resource scarcity become the new normal, adoption is set to increase.

4. Big Players in Other Industries Taking an Interest

Globally, agricultural is a very geographically decentralized industry. It often takes working with established companies or governments that have farm-level distribution networks to truly scale new technologies to large numbers of farms.

However, in the past few years, we have also observed interest from major companies operating in other industries that have large rural distribution networks. I am not referring to Microsoft, IBM, and other software tech giants —  they may have their own farming-related technology programs and formidable technical capabilities, but they don’t have established distribution networks for rural areas. There are other major companies, operating across sectors as diverse as healthcare and telecom, that have begun to take an interest in introducing precision agriculture technologies as additional offerings through their distribution networks. Some of these companies are digitally native, and thus very willing to experiment with the latest technologies, and partnering with some of these old giants who are new players in agriculture, which has started to bring fruitful results.

5. Increasing Digitization with COVID-19

As mentioned in the introduction, even smallholder farmers are now dramatically more familiar with digital technologies than ever before. Coupled with the other four shifts noted above, there was never a better time to bring precision agriculture to farmers. The time is now, to make the best of the current situation and help farmers everywhere to grow more with fewer resources!

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