Impact of automation on global engagement of farmers

The terms precision agriculture and smart-farming are two significant aspects that involve indulgence of advanced technologies and integration into existing farming practices. In accordance with the ideas of Khatri-Chhetri et al. (2017), with the global population increment projection of 9.7 billion by 2050, agricultural production requirements require increment by 70% from existing level. In this particular instance, automation can essentially assist with its core technological paradigms for strategic growth of the farm. Some major technologies that are currently assisting in agriculture’s effective development can be considered as harvest automation, autonomous tractors, and drones, seeding and weeding. These aspects are bringing up significant advantages like consumer benefits, labour efficiency, reduced environmental footprint and others. On the other hand, Roopaei et al. (2017) has illustrated that implying the cutting-edge technologies related to agriculture in the actual field is difficult due to various reasons such as lack of awareness, high costs and others. Despite the challenges, developed countries are considering indulgence of automated farming to address global issues like rising population, labour shortage, changing preference of consumers and other related aspects.

Harvesting fruits and vegetables with automated technology has always been a greater issue for the farmers. However, in recent times, programming of the harvesting robots is being done in a way that ensures a gentle plucking mechanism to avoid damages to crops. With the help of effective robotic manipulators using vacuum instead of robotic hand or claw like mechanisms, new age companies are getting success in terms of crop harvesting automation (Newell and Taylor, 2018). Additionally, another technology of autonomous tractors can be considered as another significant technological paradigm that can be controlled remotely as well as pre-programmed for assisting farmers. Apart from this, rapid technological diffusion is assisting the core aspects of autonomy in farming. Drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in the farming sector are getting used massively for better crop optimisation. Additionally, UAVs or drones are being used for monitoring crop conditions from remote spaces as well as for application of plant treatment options (Zhu et al., 2018). Current industrialised world has essentially entered a new era that illustrates widespread automation that might further turn into long-term gains for wealth accumulation. As the traditional methods used by farmers are not viable or sufficient for solving the production issue for large scale population, automated techniques can help to increase the soil productivity with limited usage of pesticides or fertilizers in the required areas instead of the entire ground. Furthermore, farming being an old industry has essentially undergone innumerable changes that have proceeded according to the actual requirements. Nursery automation, precision seeding, crop analysis, effective irrigation with robot assisted paradigm, pruning and thinning are some significant aspects that have been essentially gained by automated farming. These farming industries are essentially aiding growth of the farmer as well as increasing their awareness regarding strategic development of farming which fulfils the main roles of transnational actors.

Smart farming is another emerging concept that is getting considered by farmers using contemporary ICT technologies for maximising a product’s quality and quantity besides optimising resources. According to the study of Kamilaris et al. (2019), sensors, software, connectivity, location, robotics and data analytics are being considered as the core components of smart farming in contemporary set-up. As for sensors, soil, light, water temperature management and humidity management are some of the significant aspects considered for an effective development of smart farming. Apart from that, specialised solutions or software are being used for targeting crop timing, farm type based crop suggestions. Moreover, IoT platforms with use case agnostic views are being generated for supporting the core concept of smart farming. As for the case of connectivity to farming with smart integration, cellular networks and Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) are getting considered for ensuring a significant strategic growth. Furthermore, location based tracing for area based crop suggestions is currently done with satellite imaging and Global Positioning System (GPS) which illustrates soil readiness, fertiliser usage, crop timing as well as production capabilities. Drury et al. (2019) has illustrated that, in the field of agriculture, data analytics is showing the path of pipelining solutions for strategic furtherance. For instance, standalone analytics solutions for effective growth of production, downstream solutions and data pipelining are some of the significant areas of consideration for analytics based development. With the help of an effective data analytics platform, assessment of risk, boosting productivity, management of environmental challenges, cost saving and business opportunities are some of the significant elements that need to be considered for effective growth. Apart from this, better management of supply chain through Artificial Intelligence based control mechanisms is gained through smart farming methods. Data science is effectively changing the way through which agricultural professionals can make decisions regarding yield and harvesting. In addition to that, IoT based smart farming does not only target massive operations of farming; instead, it considers development of emerging agricultural trends such as family farming, organic farming and others. In the views of Kumar and Ilango (2018), the third green revolution is standing at the threshold and anticipated to revolutionise genetic engineering of food which may help in fulfilment of United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) such as no poverty as well as zero hunger.