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Agri Business Review | Friday, April 15, 2022
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Innovation is more central in modern agriculture than ever before.
FREMONT, CA: The industry faces enormous challenges, from ascending costs of supplies, a deficiency of labor, and changes in consumer choices for transparency and sustainability. Major technology innovations in the space have concentrated on indoor vertical farming, automation and robotics, modern greenhouse practices, precision agriculture and blockchain.
Indoor Vertical Farming
Indoor vertical farming can expand crop yields, overcome narrow land areas, and even reduce farming's impact on the environment by decreasing the distance traveled in the supply chain. Indoor vertical farming can be defined as growing produce stacked one above another in a closed and controlled environment.
Growing shelves mounted vertically considerably reduces the land space required to grow plants compared to conventional farming methods. This kind of growth is often associated with the city and urban farming because of its ability to thrive in limited space.
Vertical farms are unique because some setups don't require soil for plants to grow. In addition, vertical farming can control variables such as light, humidity, and water to precisely measure year-round, increasing food production with reliable harvests.
Farm Automation
Farm automation, much associated with "smart farming," is a technology that makes farms more efficient and automates the crop or livestock production cycle. So many companies are working on robotics innovation to develop drones, autonomous tractors, robotic harvesters, automatic watering, and seeding robots.
Technological advancements, from robotics and drones to computer vision software, have entirely transformed modern agriculture. The main goal of farm automation technology is to cover more manageable, mundane tasks. Farms commonly utilize significant technologies, including harvest automation, autonomous tractors, seeding and weeding, and drones.
Precision Agriculture
Agriculture is evolving - technology is becoming indispensable to every commercial farm. New precision agriculture companies are emerging technologies that allow farmers to magnify yields by controlling every variable of crop farming, such as moisture levels, pest stress, soil conditions, and micro-climates.
In addition, by providing more accurate techniques for planting and growing crops, precision agriculture enables farmers to increase efficiency and manage costs. As a result, precision agriculture companies have found an enormous opportunity to grow.
Blockchain
Blockchain's capacity to track ownership records and tamper-resistance can be utilized to solve urgent issues, for example, food fraud, safety recalls, supply chain inefficiency and food traceability in the current food system. Blockchain'sIn addition, a unique decentralized structure ensures verified products and practices to create a market for premium products with transparency.
The blockchain application for trades might also revolutionize traditional commodity trading and hedging. Blockchain empowers verified transactions to be securely shared with all players in the food supply chain, creating a marketplace with enormous transparency.