What does digital agriculture bring to tomorrow’s food systems?

We tend to associate the digital world with the intangible, with a long series of zeros and ones that allow us to obtain information instantly, choose a road route or make stock market transactions in tenths of a second. And in the face of this futuristic maelstrom, we still think of the countryside and agriculture as primordial, slow and tangible: land, water, effort…

But the reality is that these two worlds met some time ago. Digitalisation has arrived in the field to meet very diverse needs: from obtaining much more accurate weather forecasts or controlling the humidity of a field, to analysing the microbiome of the soil or knowing the prices of a product on the international market. Because everything can be translated into data that is accumulated, interconnected and analysed. Data with which to feed algorithms and obtain precision tools that are already a reality.

The possibilities brought by these innovations should help us to make agriculture more resilient and improve our food systems and must therefore be designed and used to become a lever to achieve the 2030 Agenda goals in the immediate future.

Capturing data with the internet of things

In 2019, the FAO report E-agriculture in Action. Big data for agriculture already anticipated that agriculture would be one of the sectors that would generate and consume the most data and openly declared the capacity of digital tools to help us achieve more efficient agriculture.

But what are we talking about when we talk about data, how is it captured, processed and used, and what are its uses?

To find the answer to these questions, lets picture a vineyard in a prestigious wine-growing area in Spain. It is being flown over by a drone taking images that shortly afterwards reach the computer of the farmer… and they are no longer images. They have become an accurate map that indicates the state of the plots and the plants with a much higher precision than the human eye is able to establish: on this map are drawn the areas with water stress, those with less vigour, those affected by a fungal disease… With this data, decision making becomes more precise: irrigation is only carried out where it is necessary and the minimum essential amount of phytosanitary products is used in the required place, obstacles are identified and planning is improved.

Drones have long since arrived in our fields to provide us with detailed crop information and make precision farming possible. They are complemented by satellites, which also provide valuable data with their images. And they are not alone, because every day different devices capable of capturing data from fields, plants and livestock are being added. They collect data and send it via the internet to the required locations. Agriculture uses these devices in the field and also places them on farm implements, quads or tractors. Even autonomous robots. Beekeepers are beginning to incorporate them into their hives. And cattle farmers are also digitally monitoring their animals.

The aim of all this effort is always the same: to have accurate data on the state of a farm in order to make better decisions. This is the power of the internet of things (IoT). Indeed, the main benefits of digital transformation include:

avoiding waste of resources, from water to fertiliser
polluting less, by using only strictly necessary treatments
improving the control of crops and production through accurate planning
achieve considerable economic savings for the farmer.

But this is only the beginning of a new understanding of agriculture.

Searching for solutions in a sea of data with artificial intelligence

Thermal or spectral photography of a plot, read by its manager before making decisions, is a first step in the digital approach. But what happens when the data is multiplied? Because in addition to the knowledge provided by the flight of a drone, we have the existing data (in the form of historical series) on meteorology, satellite images or market data. Data that only grows around the four “V”: Volume, Velocity, Variety and Veracity.

No human being can process all this information. But artificial intelligence does, and after a good training, it can have a lot to offer the primary sector, including:

Deliver predictions of value. Because artificial intelligence can analyse large historical data sets and cross-reference them with data it receives in real time, including weather, soil and crop type data, it can then generate accurate forecasts that allow farmers to plan their tasks, optimise production and reduce uncertainty.
Anticipate potential problems, especially those caused by pests and diseases. to effectively prevent their spread. This is done for example through image processing, in the case of crops, or through analysis of temperature or other physiological parameters in the case of livestock.
Improving the quality of the harvest. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a drone flying over a vineyard or a tractor with cameras taking pictures of a fruit orchard. The important thing is that artificially intelligent software will use these images to calculate the conditions of a crop. It will then be able to suggest the right amount of irrigation, tillage or fertiliser to achieve the best quality.

The applications of artificial intelligence are many and growing all the time. Today, we already have the possibility of minimising water consumption by using an algorithm that indicates exactly how much water a given crop needs, when it needs it and even activates and deactivates automatic irrigation. We can also select varieties adapted to climate change by analysing genetic data and using machine learning algorithms. Or grow crops in fully automated greenhouses. Or something as unique as what the AINIA technology institute in Valencia is doing at the moment: creating an autonomous robot capable of picking fruit that has fallen to the ground after a storm to sort it and, before it is completely lost, obtain quality by-products (in this video you have the detailed explanation).

The future is here. But… are we talking about a future for all?

The challenge of bridging the digital divide to leave no one behind

At the moment, in the field of agriculture, there is a lot of data available in open format, but the same is not true for artificial intelligence tools capable of interpreting these data. And it is very important that these digital benefits are accessible to everyone, especially considering that most of the world’s food depends on family farms.

That’s why the FAO has set out to bring the benefits of digitisation closer to everyone and make sure that no one is left behind.

First, by providing open data, making them available to anyone who needs them.
Second, by encouraging the use and adoption of digital technologies across the globe with easy and accessible approaches.
And, finally, by promoting public investments in this direction.

On this path, FAO joined the Digital Public Goods Alliance in mid-2022, an organisation that looks to digital tools to help the planet achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by the target date. “Being part of this Alliance advances FAO’s commitment to harness the potential of digital agriculture by ensuring inclusiveness and bridging the digital divide between countries and regions through affordable access to digital technologies, digital literacy and digital public goods,” said Maximo Torero, FAO Chief Economist.

So far, four digital public goods have been created:

The Hand in Hand geospatial platform, which provides access to millions of data layers from different domains and sources, including FAOSTAT, offering food and agriculture data from more than 245 countries and 35 regions, from 1961 to the most recent year available.
FAO’s digital services portfolio, which among other things expands agricultural services for smallholder and family farmers.
The Open Access Water Productivity Database, which provides near real-time data to monitor agricultural water productivity at different scales.
Open Foris, which is helping more than 30,000 people in 180 countries to collect, analyse and report land use data.

Yes, the future is today. But it is up to us to make sure it is a fully inclusive one.