Asia’s path to a greener future
PRECISION FARMING ---------------
OVERALL
Precision farming is a management concept that uses technologies to gather and analyse data to improve crop efficiency and quality. 27 Precision farming is proving to be an innovative decarbonising tool for Asia’s agriculture industry. It makes use of a diverse set of tools, such as sensor-based technologies, satellites, and farm automation like robots, the Internet of Things (IoT) and drones, which enable better yields with fewer resources. 28 The World Economic Forum estimates that, if 15-25% of farms adopted precision farming, GHG emissions could be reduced by 10% by 2030. The tools used also provide farmers with other benefits such as automating recurring tasks and minimising error rates. Despite these advantages, only 9% of farmers in Asia are currently using or planning to use at least one precision agriculture technology. This is a significantly lower rate than Europe (62%), North America (61%) and South America (50%). 29 Uptake is especially low among small and marginal farmers, who represent the majority of the farming community and produce 80% of the food consumed in the region. Barriers to adoption include high initial infrastructure set-up costs for solutions such as IoT to monitor and analyse data. 30,31 Globally, 47% of farmers cite high costs as a major barrier to adopting innovative agricultural technologies. 32 While there is an intent to adopt advanced precision farming technologies, farmers in the region have more fundamental problems to address like “access to credit, high quality inputs, market and equipment”, says Siddharth Jadhav, who is the CEO of Polybee, a Singapore- based tech firm that aims to improve food security.
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make up 58% and 23% of global investments respectively, Asia accounts for only 8%, at US$500m. 33 Today, relatively few strategic investors and accelerators provide the support and capital, and most are international. For example, about 80% of the capital invested in India’s agritech in 2019 came from international investors. Such investors often prefer to channel their capital into more established ventures to avoid the perceived high risks of start-ups. These challenges are expected to persist in parts of the region that have insufficiently developed smart agriculture ecosystems to attract investments. 34 Some countries in the region have made inroads in innovating agricultural practices. Japan is focusing on driverless tractors. 35 Farmers in China are extensively making use of agricultural drones—with recent estimates suggesting that more than 120,000 were used for precisely applying pesticides in the country. 36 Support from the government and agricultural co-operatives will be key in moving past fundamental farmer problems and preparing the industry for more automation.
The lagging investments for precision farming technologies in Asia reflect these challenges. While the US and Europe
Farmers in the region have more fundamental problems to address like “access to credit, high quality inputs, market and equipment.”
Siddharth Jadhav, Chief Executive Officer, Polybee
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