Modernising agriculture is critical to reduce the value of national agriculture deficit of RM18.8 billion. One strategy is to reduce dependence on vegetable imports by up to 30%. Vertical farming, which refers to large scale, mostly indoor, system where crops are grown vertically in layers of racks under controlled environment, is touted as one of the solutions to future vegetable production. Among the cutting- edge technologies that is said to give a major boost to the agriculture are as follows:
Soil quality
Insects/ pests management
Optimizing farm & plantation
Plant health
Addressing Climate/ weather challenges
Disease management
Drones, robotics, AI, & automation platforms
3D printers
24/7 Sensors & real-time monitoring
Harvest & warehouse management
Source: MIGHT Analytics
In a recent webinar, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Economic Affairs) said “the plunge in oil prices has left major impacts on oil export earnings and the government’s revenues”. A reduced income means a reduced purchasing power. Even though food rank at the bottom of Maslow hierarchy of needs, it really means it has the highest priority to human. Therefore, the demand for food will continue to be there albeit the preferred factors must be cheap, accessible, and equally healthy due to reduced purchasing power among the masses. Food security incorporating factors mentioned earlier will help policy makers, respective entities in the private and public sectors in crafting an innovative approach to deal with this pressing matter. And that should take place sooner rather than later due to the frequency and uncertainty of such rare or worst, black swan event tend to make an appearance in the last 30 years.
Augmented & virtual reality (AR & VR)
Precision agriculture & predictive data analytics
Source: Adapted from MIGHT Foresight Analytics
The use of these modern technologies and agricultural practices, will be among the key aspects to be adopted in future agriculture. Smart farming, championed by the FAO, is a farming management concept utilizing modern technologies such as GPS, soil scanning, data management and IoT technology to boost the quantity and quality of agricultural products. As such, in line with the 4th Industrial Revolution, digital agriculture powered by IoT has been touted as a new technology frontier that will certainly boost productivity for all sectors, including the agro-food sector. Illustrated here are some of the benefits of infusing such technologies to give an uplift to the traditional agriculture sector.
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Malaysian Technology Strategic Outlook 2019/2020 Intergration of High Technology
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