Digital Agriculture for the Years to Come

The agriculture industry has evolved significantly over the last 50 years. Technology developments have led to larger, quicker, and more productive farm equipment, enabling the more efficient cultivation of larger areas. Additionally, improved irrigation, fertilizers, and seed have helped farmers to increase crops. New technologies such as artificial intelligence, analytics, networked sensors, and others may increase yields even further, improve the efficiency of water and other inputs, and promote sustainability and resilience in cattle rearing and agricultural output. Implementing such cutting-edge technologies is known as agriculture 4.0. But, without a solid infrastructure for connectivity, none of this is practical. If connection is successfully implemented in the industry, agriculture may add $500 billion in value to the global GDP by 2030. This would lead to an increase of 7–9% over the anticipated total and greatly relieve the pressure currently imposed on farmers. It is one of just seven industries that will raise global GDP by $2 to $3 trillion over the next 10 years because of better connectivity. World population is expected to grow to 9.6 billion by 2050 that lead to significant increase in the demand for food. On the other hand, the availability of natural resources like freshwater and productive arable land is getting constrained year after year. Nearly 821 million people still suffer from hunger. Digital agriculture, also known as smart farming or e-agriculture, is the use of tools to collect, store, analyze, and disseminate electronic data and/or information in agriculture. The present emphasis is on reducing water, energy, and material use in agriculture as access to water and material resources becomes more challenging due to climate change and population expansion. Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) can be used to grow vegetables and high-value commodities in any environment with outstanding water, soil, and fertilizer efficiency, since local production reduces transportation costs. Contrary to conventional field agriculture, CEA offers more effective nutrient usage while using up to 80% less land and nearly 90% less water. Keeping in view of the population progression, declining land resources, and climate vagaries, there is a need to develop selection methods with more accuracy and precision. The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) in the past decade has offered great potential to augment the climate smart agriculture. Protected agriculture, as against open-field farming, offers a more conducive and manageable environment for crop growth through greenhouse technology, which is somewhat unrestricted by the natural environment and encourages the intensive and effective use of agricultural resources. Remote sensing (RS) is a diagnostic tool that can act as an early warning system. Due to recent developments in sensor technologies, data management, and data analytics, the agricultural community now has access to a number of RS choices. All digital technologies that can be used in agriculture to improve yield, plant protection and enhance nutritional quality are summarized here.