The bottom line in adopting Agritech Solutions

Agritech solution providers need to consider several actions in 2024 when looking to move toward a more sustainable production and to enhance efficiencies:

Educate farmers on agritech options: Farmers should be educated about the various types of network connectivity and IOT backhaul connection options. There’s likely room for improvement if they work closely with the agriculture ecosystem players to help them discover connectivity needs based on specific use cases, such as using Wi-fi or 2G/3G for crop-watering systems instead of the more advanced 4G/5G or satellite networks.

Assist with tech implementations: Tech companies can support developing costbenefit assessment tools to help farmers evaluate and identify trade-offs for non-agritech versus agritech-enabled farming methods. Besides, they can assist the agriculture ecosystem players to figure out what connectivity technology is needed for a specific issue, for example, using edge computing and 2G/3G cellular links to implement satellite-connected cattle collars in a livestock ranch to build virtual fencing. This might require assessing the nature, provenance, timing, and volume of data that would flow across the supply chain; and implementing a permissioned and trusted exchange of data from farm to plate. Importantly, agritech companies can be discerning in collecting the right amount of data and establishing data governance processes to address farmers’ concerns about privacy and data usage.

Create an integrated view of data across the agriculture ecosystem: Blending granular data related to land, soil, climate, and water on a shared digital platform could help farmers and extended ecosystem participants glean insights about the most prominent levers to enhance productivity and quality. This would likely require integrating data from cloud, satellites, mobile devices, sensor networks, and agribots, and using AI to run analytics and deliver insights over a common data-sharing platform that farmers, scientists, researchers, and agriculture consultants and advisors can consume.

Enable sustainability and measure effectiveness: From a social accountability standpoint, farmers will likely be required to furnish impact data for nature, climate, and animal welfare. Novel options such as using low-methane producing supplements to contain livestock emissions when cattle belch, and installing solar photovoltaic panels on farmlands to generate solar power (aka agrivoltaics) are already being explored. Further, agritech providers can develop technology to measure, report, and verify relevant metrics to help farmers demonstrate the efficacy of their sustainable farming practices. With emerging Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) regulations, technology that captures data to help comply with sustainability frameworks such as sciencebased targets initiative (SBTI) and Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and tracks emissions information will become critical. For water usage, technology that monitors and optimises water used for irrigation is expected to gain prominence, for instance, low-rank adaptation of large language models (LORA) based analytics, coupled with satellite direct-todevice (D2D) or mobile (4G/5G) or Wi-fi–based sensor networks to track, schedule, and allocate precise amount of water for plants.

Agritech can play a much larger role in the coming year to not only help address persistent challenges that have plagued the agricultural sector for decades, but even deliver tangible benefits to farmers and consumers alike—lowering costs and improving return on investment, driving sustainable growth by reducing the strain on resources, and making food more plentiful and affordable.