There will be 9 billion people on the planet by 2050 and to feed them will require a 50%
increase in agricultural production ....
For millennia, farmers have fed the planet. But population growth, climate change and
over-farming have drastically changed the industry.
Agriculture now consumes 70% of global freshwater resources.
Over-fertilisation, meant to enhance a crop’s chance of success, has degraded the Earth’s
land and is responsible for major waterway disruptions, such as this dead zone in the
Gulf of Mexico that stretches more than 6000 miles across.
Modern farms are starting to embrace precision agriculture to ensure growth without harming
the environment. It’s a market predicted to be worth 14.1
billion dollars by 2026.
Companies such as Yara, based in Norway, are helping farms to use data to be more efficient.
This water sensor measures the tugor pressure of the leaf, essentially the blood pressure
of the plant. The data is sent directly to the central portal which interprets the information
and makes a recommendation.
Yara claim this can save up to 20% of water.
When we talk about making farming more sustainable, one of the premises is to grow more, or the
same, with less imputs. And we have a suite of solutions that take geospatial data, weather
data, the soil reality, the practices that the farmer has, and help the farmer really
find out how much nutrition to put when and where on the field. When exploring what really
matters for small holder farmers, so those farmers in Africa and Asia that have a very
small piece of land. What they tell us very often, it’s the weather. So together with
IBM, we have actually launched 'Farm Weather'. 'Yara Farm Weather' which is a solution that
helps farmers find exactly the right weather insights and agronomic advice for their farm.
The number of precision agriculture installations has increased to 75 million, up from 30 million
over the past few years.
We're talking artificial Intelligence, we're talking handling terabytes of data every second,
we're talking about the 'Internet Of Things' connecting all tractors in the world. If we
can improve farming output per field, we can reduce the amount of land that is needed for
the food that we need to produce and thereby reduce carbon emissions, create natural habitats
create carbon sinks and increase biodiversity.
Farms that have embraced precision agriculture have seen yields rise, energy costs drop and
water use fall.
Digital farming is a global opportunity. Sustainable business development today means of course
building a business that is viable but at the same time it has to serve a higher purpose,
doing business with a purpose.