“Software is Feeding the World” is a weekly newsletter for Food/AgTech leaders about technology trends.

Greetings from the San Francisco Bay Area. Today is Mahatma Gandhi’s 153rd birth anniversary. It has also been 40 years since the release of the iconic movie “Gandhi.”

Now on to this week’s edition.

Can tech democratize precision agriculture?

The USA is the largest and earliest adopter of precision agriculture. Currently, 15-40% of large farms in the US use some form of precision technology, such as variable-rate technology or guidance systems. The small farms in the USA that make up 85% of the total farms do not use much precision technology.

In most cases, precision agriculture technology is being offered to farmers through their trusted dealer/retailer network. Adoption of precision agriculture technology is more prevalent in medium and large farming operations within commodity row crops.

This can be seen quite clearly based on CropLife’s agriculture retailer input supplier survey of 141 respondents in the Midwest, which included cooperatives, independent retailers, and regional or national chains. These dealers primarily work with field crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, cotton, milo, sugar beets, and forage.

Figure 2. Dealer offerings of sensing-related technologies over time. 2025 are projections. Source: CropLife-Purdue University Precision Agriculture Dealership Survey (Source: CropLife)

According to a report on precision agriculture policy adoption outlook for 2023, there have been some obstacles to adoption of precision agriculture technology beyond its current state of adoption in the US, and worldwide.

• Lack of knowledge about benefits of new approaches
• Integrated platforms are challenging to find, and they can be difficult to use
• Good broadband connectivity is not universal in rural areas
• Initial financial investment can be high

Democratization

Can technology help democratize the adoption of precision agriculture more broadly outside of the mid-large sized commodity row crop farmers?

We are seeing some technology trends which could make adoption of precision technology a bit easier over the coming years.

Sensor fusion platforms

Precision agriculture solutions are sensor fusion platforms. Sensor fusion is the process to take data from a variety of sensors, normalize, join, and aggregate the data across multiple raster and vector layers, and then run algorithms (ML/AI) to extract insights.

Today, there are hardly any tools and technologies, which can do sensor fusion across hundreds of data layers across millions of acres of data, and do it in a performant and cost-effective manner.

The rise of new AI/ML techniques, and the maturation and sophistication of cloud platforms will make this feasible soon. It should help unlock additional capabilities and analysis, which today is available to large agriculture incumbents only. I believe this democratization should unlock additional innovation.

Camera systems

Camera systems are being used in autonomous tractors, with vision based systems. Camera based systems are at the core of automation, specialized solutions like see & spray etc.

The push for see & spray systems, automation will bring down the cost of camera systems, and drive down the cost curve for these sophisticated solutions. As the cost of these systems comes down, along with the cost of sensor fusion technologies, we will see broader adoption of these tools.

In a parallel example, Elon Musk announced during Tesla’s AI Day on Friday, that they hope to make a general purpose robot available for less than the price of a car (< $ 20K). You can watch the Tesla AI Day's fascinating video here.

GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems)

High precision GNSS technology brings the benefits of improved pass-to-pass efficiency. Precision agriculture technology is supposed to reduce agriculture inputs with financial, agronomic, and environmental benefits.

Edge computing can reduce reliance on broadband connectivity

Rural connectivity and broadband availability has been a challenge for adoption of precision agriculture technology. The recent launches of new constellations like StarLink (from Elon Musk again), will reduce some of the access issues.

The rise of edge computing capabilities by processing sense data on the sensor itself (or near the sensor) will reduce bandwidth requirements, and will not require backhauling vast amounts of sensor data back to the cloud.

Edge computation at scale, and a reasonable price point will open up new possibilities in different parts of the world. This is critical as the proliferation of smartphones already provides an inexpensive “edge computer” to millions of farmers today.

Open source software

The open source movement in agriculture is very small, and has had some traction, but given the complexity of technology solutions, it has not caught fire, as it did in the programming world with Linux etc.

The open source software movement has the potential to further democratize adoption of precision agriculture. (I had written about open source software in edition 80, and edition 81 last year.)

The convergence of some of these trends could unlock new value in the near future.

Could Amara’s law be at work here?

Innovating through Uncertainty: McKinsey Voice of the US Farmer Survey (2022)

McKinsey surveyed more than 1,300 US row- and specialty-crop farmers in May 2022. Their responses reveal that farmers are regarding the future with cautious optimism and that it is more important than ever for farmers to capture the most from every acre.

The report is worth a read, but here are some highlights I found quite interesting.

1. Most farmers believe profitability will grow in the next two years, in spite of rising input prices.

2. About 30% of large farm operators have become less brand loyal, when it comes to farm equipment.

It opens up possibilities for equipment makers to push smarter machines, aftermarket attachments, service models etc. for different solutions like see & spray, automation, equipment efficiency, and labor management.

3. In spite of the doom and gloom associated with the AgTech sector here in the US, the adoption trend of different precision agriculture technology solutions is higher among large and medium-size farms.

4. Carbon programs are faltering due to uncertain or low ROI, difficulty to understand the program, and not all farmers qualify due to principles of additionality, and permanence.

The McKinsey report ends with some interesting feedback for suppliers.

Data, analytics, and ML/AI have a role to enable omni-channel and digital sales and engagement. Nutrien has pushed an omni-channel strategy. (I had written about omni-channel strategies in edition 22 in August 2020)

Data, & ML/AI lends itself to personalization and contextual understanding.

This seems harder to pull off, as it requires making connections across the food and agriculture value chain, which is quite silo’ed.

This will be a tough one to pull off, beyond no-till and cover crop adoption (which itself is challenging).

In the News

AgTech and Agronomy

​Syngenta Crop Protection launches a commercial solution to diagnose infestation of nematodes in soybean through remote sensing.

Breeding soybean that does not “fix” its nitrogen? Why? In typical soybean plants, root nodules interact with microbes in the soil to fix nitrogen from the air, eliminating the need to apply nitrogen fertilizer.

​Report shows ways to cut agriculture GHG emissions, and recommends planting more legume crops that fix their own nitrogen. How do you square it with the previous breeding research?

​Good profile of Emma Weston, Agridigital. “It wasn’t about taking away business from those big companies, but about growing the pie that is needed to feed the world”

​Complete medical check-up for soil? Syngenta launches mapping service to scan soil health including common properties like pH, soil texture, organic matter, carbon, and cation exchange capacity, as well as elevation and plant water availability – all together, it offers over 800 data reference points per hectare.

​Multi Modes of action in one product is the name of the game for many new crop protection products, and BASF’s new line up for 2023 holds to that.

​Trimble and Claas strategic alliance to offer one common interface to reduce the complexities of using separate displays with different user interfaces in the cab.

​Yardstick, with a cloud-enabled handheld hardware component with a spectral probe and camera on its tip is like “taking a movie of the soil” and lands $ 18m investment.

​Connected Farmer Platform with Dimitra using ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network (How many buzzwords can you fit in one sentence??)

Robotics and Automation

Electric tractors: “If we can demonstrate that the economics are better using a different method, a different platform, and a different energy source, people respond to those benefits and they will adopt these different methods in order to make more money.”

​“Eye of Sauron” with Verdant Robotics. “As the machine moves over a field the tool’s lights and cameras create images to develop an AI twin record of each field, modeling every plant on every square foot of soil. It generates a new image in every field pass so images can be laid over each other to develop a season-long snapshot of fert or weed control performance.”

​Automation of hand-weeding: Weeding an 18-acre artichoke field in a 10 hour shift with machines vs. 20 people and two days to finish the job.

Drones have been a side dish. They're not the steak. Is this changing for aerial sprayer drones? (Not a good analogy for a vegetarian like me!)

Sustainability

A German startup is making regenerative agriculture mainstream.

Shameless cropaganda (??!) is polluted with dishonesty

By 2030, King Arthur plans to have the following: 100% of the flour in its bags milled from regeneratively grown wheat. All current King Arthur facilities use 100% renewable electricity. “Transportation-related” greenhouse gas emissions reduced by 30%. 100% circular packaging.

Zero-waste from facilities to landfills

Smallholder

​Sustainable and scalable climate-smart agricultural practices in Malawi and Thailand

​Three African AgTech startups to watch! (Farmerline, Apollo, and Aerbobotics)

​Access to finance for finance and the rise of agrifintech. Around 95% of global farms are smallholder with less than five hectares of land, which produce 80% of food for some regions, including Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The reason traditional financial institutions often shy away from the agricultural sector is the challenge of assessing risk in this unpredictable industry.

E-Book: Global Perspectives on Agriculture Technology

You can get my ebook for free! Or you can donate an amount of your choice.

The 12 conversations explore a wide range of topics like the venture capital model for Agricultural Technology (AgTech), different financing options for AgTech, the nature of innovation, automation, how farming will change in the future, the culture clash between technologists and agriculture industry veterans, history of US and Canadian agriculture, techno-optimism, role of policy and science, mental health issues for farmers, produce e-commerce, challenges with smallholder farming in countries like India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia, and the potential of farm improvements to raise the standard of living of millions of farmers in the developing world.

All proceeds from the book (minus taxes, transaction fees etc.) will be donated to a non-profit or charity, working to improve the lives of people working in our food and agriculture systems. Rhishi will match the first $ 1001 of sales dollar-for-dollar with his own money.

Current donation amount $ 2701.

Can you help push this to $ 5,000 by the end of the year?

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About me

My name is Rhishi Pethe. I lead the product management team at Project Mineral (focused on sustainable agriculture). The views expressed in this newsletter are my personal opinions.