By the time you read this sentence, ten more people will have joined the growing world population. Perhaps that number might be easier to imagine than the often-quoted ten billion people by 2050. A huge statistic, seemingly years into the future. But those additional ten people – sorry, it’s now twenty – will all want to be able to do the most basic human function: to eat.
The world’s agriculture faces a monumental task. It must feed a growing world population by producing more food over the course of the next 30 harvests than has been produced in the last 10,000 years.
And this production will need to be sustainable, avoiding unnecessary waste and respecting and improving the environments by growing more food on less land, using fewer inputs, respecting water quality and quantity, improving soil health and working to mitigate climate change.
How will we achieve this?
The solution
As impossible as it sounds, we can do more with less. And technology holds the key. In farming, as in so many other industries, digital tools and innovations are helping to transform traditional approaches and create efficiencies.
The US has been an early adopter of agricultural technology (AgTech), from big data and IoT to GPS and GM. This adoption, experts say, has already led to tremendous productivity gains. Total agricultural output nearly tripled between 1948 and 2015, even as the amount of labour and land used in farming declined by about 75 per cent and 24 per cent respectively. In 1970, one farmer could on average produce food to feed 72 people. Today, that one farmer can feed 155 people. Most of this is down to the adoption of new technologies.
Precision agriculture
Precision technologies have been among the first to take off, enabled by the advent of GPS and GNSS. As the name suggests, precision agriculture makes farming practices more accurate. It uses a wide range of tools including GPS, sensors and even drones to collect, measure and analyse data to help farmers better understand their land and what each individual crop needs for optimal yield.
Thanks to precision technology, US farmers can manage the inputs for their crops more accurately than ever before. Using the data gathered, they can vary and adapt their seeding and application rates to ensure that they are applying just the right amount of seed, fertiliser and crop protection products to each area of their fields. Nothing is wasted. This is resource efficiency at its best.
Water is another area where precision agriculture is making a difference. In California, vineyards are using a technical solution based on weather reports and remote sensor data to deliver precise amounts of water to each vine. As the weather changes, the irrigation methods react to ensure the vines only receive water when needed, helping optimise growth.
Staying in drought-prone California, the Almond Board of California is continually investing and researching new ways to conserve water. One innovation currently under development is an on-leaf water sensor technology. Sensors collect information from magnetic leaf clamps that are wired to sending units fastened to the tree. The clamps measure turgor pressure (rigidity due to absorption of fluid) to provide information on when and where water is needed in the orchard.
GM technology
Genetic modification technology first came into commercial use in the 1990s, when Calgene’s firmer-for-longer Flavr Savr tomato was approved in the US and sold successfully as a puree in the UK until anti-GM campaigners forced supermarkets to take it off the shelves. Today, the most common GM crops grown in the US are corn, soy and cotton. And while the technology has come under siege in Europe, US farmers and their 17 million counterparts in other countries across the world, have readily embraced the benefits. GM crops, for example, are tolerant to specific herbicides; this allows for ‘over-the-top’ spraying that targets both grass and broad-leaved weeds without harming the crop itself. GM crops are also resistant to certain insects, so instead of applying insecticide for pest control, a very specific and safe insecticide is delivered via the plant itself. And let’s not forget GM foods such as potatoes that are less prone to bruising and black spots, and apples that are non-browning, which saves food from landfill and helps reduce waste.
The productivity benefits of GM technology are undeniable. In 2015, GMOs enabled farmers to use 48.2 million fewer acres of land to produce the same amount of crops.
The environmental benefits are pretty compelling, too. Less herbicide and insecticide are required, also less fuel as GM crops do not need to be sprayed as much, meaning less tractor trips. Farmers no longer need to deep plough in order to remove weeds – so the soil is less disturbed, it retains more moisture and less carbon is released into the atmosphere. Another crucial, if unusual, benefit is that less soil disruption means more earthworms – and earthworm tunnels allow moisture and rain to flow more easily into the soil, which is important during hot dry summers. Earthworms also help break down crop stubble into humus, helping to improve soil health and build topsoil.
Future developments
Technology is advancing all the time and we can only begin to imagine the innovations that will be available to farmers in the future. Certainly, in the shorter term, we can expect more widespread uptake of robotics and of drones – for tasks such as analysing the soil, aerial spraying and even scanning crops to check on their health. Precision agriculture is likely to become even more precise, thanks to nanotechnology. Artificial intelligence and blockchain also promise great things – and as global investment in AgTech continues to grow at pace the ‘next big thing’ could be just around the corner.
Whatever the future holds, however, farmers will need access to the best tools and the best technologies if they are to meet tomorrow’s production challenges and farm sustainably.
Farmers everywhere, across every generation, have always looked to new and safe ways to improve their operations, raise better crops and livestock, improve soil quality, and make better and sustainable use of natural resources. Now more than ever they need the freedom to do exactly that, without judgement and without prejudice, for the good of the land, the growing population and the planet.
