In the quest for bigger yields and greater environmental protection in agriculture, arguably the most important transformation these days is the increasing use of digital technologies in what has been dubbed smart farming or Farming 4.0.
After mechanisation, the introduction of mineral fertiliser and the industrialisation of production processes, connectivity and data management are now set to unleash the next – fourth – revolution in the history of farming. In line with this, smart digital farming was listed as the highest-ranking technology opportunity in the latest Global Opportunity Report in terms of its expected positive impact on society.
While precision agriculture – the use of satellite navigation, remote sensing and other tools to farm each square metre as efficiently and sustainably as possible – has been an evolving reality for some time, IT has now reached a point where it is not only possible to collect vast quantities of data, but also to use quite inexpensive, small processors to make use of this information to control different pieces of equipment or monitor individual animals.
A growing number of farmers are starting to adopt digital technology and data-driven innovations. Thanks to digital connectivity, intelligent agricultural machines can connect the different data ‘dots’ in a working process and put them into a smart and optimised order by consulting, for instance, weather data, ordering spare parts or accessing field-specific information from a central, cloud-based farm management software.
A clever combination of bits and bytes, iron and steel, the smart machine thus stands at the heart of the digital revolution in farming.
Read the full article http://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/opinion/farming-4-0-digital-technology-at-the-farm-gates/