Outlook 2020: Is This the Year for Precision Agriculture?
Bringing together some of the smartest minds of the agriculture world in Southeast Asia, Meister Media Worldwide’s first-ever Precision Application Asia event in Bangkok, Thailand, in November served as a powerful platform for value chain creation and exchange of ideas around the tools of agriculture’s third revolution — ag tech — especially for the millions of smallholders across Southeast Asia, writes Jackie Pucci at AgriBusiness Global.
The event moved forward one of the most important conversations in agriculture today: how precision agriculture is affecting the application of seed, fertilizers, water, and crop protection products, and how to capitalize on this evolution.
The end goal is shared by all: scalable, sustainable development.
Presenters and attendees took advantage of superb networking opportunities at the event and examined in interactive, multidisciplinary sessions how data is driving new application methods. Think drones, variable-rate application, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered spot application, and new formulations of crop inputs. All are poised to help improve food security and livelihoods in the region and address critical issues like climate change and soil degradation.
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“We’ve hit an inflection point where agriculture technology will dramatically increase yields in developing agriculture economies like many in Asia, and it’s because we’re experiencing a third revolution in modern agriculture that combines the benefits of the previous two, mechanization and the Green Revolution,” said David Frabotta, Meister Media Worldwide’s Editorial Market Development Director. “Through farm data that creates better decision support from service providers and agronomists, smallholders in Asia have the potential to leapfrog over 100 years of agriculture technology that was previously unavailable to them … but it won’t happen overnight. It requires a value chain to develop around existing agronomic systems in a way that integrates seamlessly into local paradigms.”
Other takeaways from Precision Application Asia include:
Real-world use studies: Summer Deng, Sales Director with DJI Agriculture, the world’s top drone manufacturer, explored real-world use studies and partnerships with local service providers. “This year more than 80% of rice grown in northeast China’s Heilongjiang province was sprayed by drone, so it has already repressed tractors and manual sprayers. In Thailand there are 10 million hectares of rice fields, which is one-third the size of China’s, so I think the market potential in Thailand is huge,” Deng said.
Continue reading at AgriBusiness Global.
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