This Is What You Need to Know about Satellites and the Global Agriculture Industry
One of the supply chains that has been late to the digital revolution is food. Around the world, most farmers still make their decisions based on personal observation and go through the usual process of trial and error as they attempt to maximize yields.
However, more startups are starting to pay attention to this ignored sector. New technologies like wearables, sensors, and robotics are making it more feasible to collect and interpret data easily. Advances in artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning are also making it easier to digitize agriculture and improve the food supply chain.
However, some significant hurdles to the adoption of this technology still exist that startups are now trying to address. Here’s what you need to know.
How Can Technology Benefit Modern Farming?
Robots and sensors deployed into fields can collect an enormous amount of data valuable to farmers about growing conditions and crop progress. These technologies can keep track of soil health, detect pests, and ensure that crops are growing as expected. In addition, technology can be programmed to harvest, fertilize, and irrigate automatically depending on the conditions reported.
Automation drives operational efficiency by reducing farmers’ investments of both money and time. Plus, the wealth of data collected from these devices helps farmers make the best decisions for the future of their crops. Farmers are able to address poor conditions before they stunt growth and prepare for harvesting in a more precise manner.
Technology also plays a role in stewardship by reducing waste of resources like water. Perhaps even more importantly, technology can direct decisions about how and when to grow to reduce food waste. Studies have shown that 40 percent of food grown in the United States and the European Union ultimately ends up as waste. Altogether, this is more than 150 million tons of food thrown away each year.
Controlling this is key to reducing supply chain waste and improving the overall profitability of farming. Digital data can help make the supply chain more transparent. This will enable suppliers to price crops accurately according to region and will also play a role in improving financial products like crop insurance.
What Are the Current Barriers to Digitized Farming?
In the past eight years or so, more than $55 billion has been invested in the digitization of agriculture. This sector has not resisted digitization because of lack of investment, but rather due to the difficulties in global communications. No infrastructure exists in many rural areas, and nearly a third of American farms lack Internet connections. Many of these farms lack even cellular network connectivity.
Unfortunately, these areas are also not high priority for telecommunications providers. This situation could change in the near future given the growing popularity of the Internet of Things and the need to connect ordinary devices to the Internet.
However, addressing this issue is easier said than done. Rural areas often lack well-maintained roads, electricity, and other basic infrastructure that is necessary for increasing connectivity. In other words, a lot of investment needs to happen before farms get more connected through traditional means like towers.
Additionally, this strategy does not address the needs of all farms, especially since aquaculture and ocean farming are also viable and popular approaches to food production. The next step involves the utilization of communication technologies such as satellites, but their use has been incredibly and prohibitively expensive. To make satellites more accessible, they need to be smaller and easier to launch so that the initial investment is not so hefty.
Are Better Communications Options Now Available?
One company working to address the issue of farm connectivity is Swarm, which has created a series of tiny satellites. A Swarm satellite is actually a twelfth of the size of the next smallest commercial communication satellite, which makes them affordable to produce and launch. Swarm now has nine satellites in orbit and plan to deploy a total of 150 in the coming year or so.
The Swarm fleet was purposely created with a focus on the growing popularity of the Internet of Things, especially as applied to the agriculture industry. Once the company’s entire fleet is deployed, the world should be covered with a latency of less than a minute.
Already, Swarm has tested and piloted its unique solution with agricultural companies and produced heartening results. The company recently raised $25 million in Series A funding to speed development, and the agriculture industry is poised to be one of the early adopters of the system. This timing is ideal as additional connected device applications become more reliable across the agricultural sector.
The digital revolution will have resounding effects on the food supply once it becomes more practical. While most people do not think of space when they considering farming technology, the use of satellites is precisely what may make the digitization of agriculture possible. In the years to come, it will be exciting to see how these technologies drive evolution in the ways in which food is grown and distributed.
