In a paper released in Nature Sustainability in April 2020, Michigan State University professor Bruno Basso, a professor in the College of Natural Science at Michigan State University, and John Antle, professor of Applied Economics at Oregon State University, posit that digital agriculture can pave the road to agricultural sustainability.
Basso, who is the co-author of the research paper, says the integration of sensors, AI (artificial intelligence), and predictive modeling is reaching a level of accuracy that can be used to design pathways to sustainability in agriculture. But, he cautions that the challenges in adopting these systems won’t change unless there are incentives that demonstrate the positive impacts on communities, the economics of the communities, and the environment.
According to Basso, digital agriculture is where agriculture, science, policy, and education intersect.
Basso says Digital Agriculture has been around for about 20 years in a form where the technology works, but it was only available in initial steps since the early nineties when GPS was first mounted on tractors.
“What’s new about all this is now is that as results of new analysis and breakthrough in agronomic sciences, we now have a better knowledge of the factors affecting crop health and yield, and why the crop yields vary within a field and from year to year,” said Basso. “These variation can now be better managed, and finally lead to more sustainable agricultural systems because the required inputs can be distributed more precisely where needed and not where they are not needed.”
“The agricultural sector remains the Cinderella compared to other primary sectors when it comes to digitalization,” said Basso. “Digital Agriculture is a combination of technologies which span from devices sensing the environment from a close distance or thousands of miles in the skies to chips monitoring food systems.”
Basso adds that along with sensors, new ways of analyzing big-data and predicting outcomes through validated simulation models and AI systems are beginning to have positive impacts for farmers and the environment.
When agriculture first took root around 12,000 years ago, it triggered a change in how people lived. Dubbed the “Neolithic Revolution", the promise of a reliable food supply enabled humans to give up their nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Out of these first settlements grew cities and complex civilizations, shaping the world as we know it.
Agriculture has allowed the human population to grow explosively, and its industrialization over the past two centuries fueled the jump from 1 billion to nearly 7.7 billion people. As a result, agriculture in its modern form has tested the limits of our environmental resources.
Agriculture causes about 23% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and uses up to 92% of the world’s freshwater. According to a report by the WWF and British food retailer Tesco, around 40% of food grown goes uneaten. China loses roughly 35 million tons of grain before retail each year, or about 5% of the 685 million tons of grain produced in 2021.
With a projected 2 billion more mouths to feed across the world by 2050, agriculture needs to simultaneously become both more productive and sustainable. That requires increased investment and adoption of productivity-boosting technology and participation from young people and smallholder farmers.
The success of any agricultural technology ultimately rests on the rate of adoption among farmers, in particular, smallholder growers.
Five of every six farms in the world are smaller than two hectares (the size of about three soccer fields) and collectively they produce a third of the world’s food. In the case of China, smallholder farmers account for as high as 80% of food production.
Many of these smallholder farmers are older and received less formal education, making it more difficult for them to adopt technology without support. The availability and accessibility of internet infrastructure is also a potential barrier in some countries.
Another critical ingredient is young talent. Encouraging more young people to take up agriculture – whether it is young scientists diving into agricultural research or Gen Z entrepreneurs selling fruit online – leads to more innovation, more ideas and more vitality.
An annual Smart Agriculture Competition, organized by Pinduoduo, with support from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, attracts participating teams from top universities and research institutes from around the world to devise technology solutions that can help smallholder farmers increase their productivity and environmental sustainability.
In this year’s contest, 80% of the participants are in their 20s, which bodes well for the future of agriculture. Technology developed during the competition is now applied in several major agricultural regions in China.
“To increase the adoption of these technologies, farmers, environmentalists, scientists, policymakers need to sit down and listen to each other to put aside competing for interests for the well being of the land that we are certainly not looking after,” said Basso.
Basso says that if the objective is to increase biodiversity, to reduce nitrogen fertilizer use, or to grow less resource-intensive bioenergy perennials, incentivization is critical.
According to a press release for the paper, the researchers’ analysis showed that if nitrogen fertilizer applications were based on demand and yield stability instead of uniform application, usage in the Midwest could be reduced by 36% with significant reductions in groundwater contamination and carbon dioxide emissions.
Basso wants these decisions to be made as a society and have society bear those costs.
“What farmers do on their land today will affect their neighbor’s grandchildren in 30 years,” said Basso.
