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Digital Agriculture Volume 9 │ Issue 1 Providing insight and analysis for business professionals Digital agriculture How to feed a growing world Demand-driven planning and forecasting A holistic and transformative approach This article is an extract from Performance, Volume 9, Issue 1, February 2017. The full journal is available at Activity-based costing Insights from E.ON Energie Deutschland ey.com/performance If you could see the future, would you change the past? Digital agriculture: helping to feed a growing world Digital (or precision) agriculture and big data hold answers to the problem of how to feed a growing world sustainably. The field-level impact of this next agricultural revolution has been well documented, digital agriculture will, without doubt, change farming. However, research on its effects of agribusinesses has been limited despite the fact it will fundamentally change multiple business functions for agribusinesses across the world. This is the first in a series of articles that will introduce these concepts and foreshadow how agribusinesses will be affected. 82 Volume 9 │ Issue 1 w Volume 9 │ Issue 1 Providing insight and analysis for business professionals Digital agriculture How to feed a growing world Demand-driven planning and forecasting A holistic and transformative approach This article is an extract from Performance, Volume 9, Issue 1, February 2017. The full journal is available at Activity-based costing Insights from E.ON Energie Deutschland ey.com/performance If you could see the future, would you change the past? Authors Rob Dongoski Global Agribusiness Leader, Ernst & Young LLP Andrew Selck Senior Manager Global Agribusiness, Ernst & Young LLP, US 83 w w Volume 9 │ Issue 1 Providing insight and analysis for business professionals Digital agriculture How to feed a growing world Demand-driven planning and forecasting A holistic and transformative approach This article is an extract from Performance, Volume 9, Issue 1, February 2017. The full journal is available at Activity-based costing Insights from E.ON Energie Deutschland ey.com/performance If you could see the future, would you change the past? Digital agriculture: helping to feed a growing world ig data and analytics have made headlines across the world for their proven ability to create and transform industries, increase revenue through new products and Bnew customers, and reduce costs and drive efficiencies. As we continue to generate ever more data through the proliferation of IoT and sensors, new technologies and techniques are being employed to turn this While the current focus on most data into usable information. Technologies investment and publications has such as machine learning and artificial been on how digital agriculture intelligence (AI) offer users opportunities will change farming, little has been to harness and transform this data. The written on how this same data growing emphasis on big data has been will impact the various agribusiness coined the “big data revolution” and is stakeholders. We have written identified as one of the most transformative this article as the first in a series technological business strategies of that focuses specifically on the the past decade. LinkedIn and Uber are opportunities and challenges that well-known examples of how big data, digital agriculture and big data industry and disruption go hand in hand. will create for agribusiness and The agriculture industry has been no food companies. exception to this trend. To outsiders, agriculture is often thought of as a low-tech industry. Ask most individuals about farming and they because it will drive innovation on top and increase farm sustainability. Investors will describe a farmer with an old tractor of innovation. For example, historical are taking note. According to AgFunder, and plow. They are often surprised to know yield, soil, nutrient and weather data over US$4.6 billion has been invested that modern agriculture is highly technical. can be analyzed to help a producer in agriculture technology during 2015.1 For example, the first commercial drone make a decision on how much fertilizer Much of this investment is in software and license issued by the US’s Federal Aviation to apply to a certain soil type in specific technology to enable digital agriculture — Association (FAA) was to a company for climates. An agronomist can analyze field a combination of data and algorithms that agricultural application. Data collection data to recommend the optimal seed provides specific recommendations at is evolving from hand-written notes that a producer should purchase. the sub-field level. For example, whereas and manual field analysis to automatic The agriculture industry has begun today most farmers make a decision to data capture via equipment, software, to harness the power big data can bring plant one seed variety on an entire 40 acre remote sensors and aerial drones. The to operations. Software and algorithms field, digital agriculture allows farmers value that this insight can bring to the are being created to leverage data to to identify and plant the “optimal seed producer and agribusiness is so significant increase yields, improve farm profitability variety” in every square meter of the field. 84 Volume 9 │ Issue 1 Volume 9 │ Issue 1 Providing insight and analysis for business professionals Digital agriculture How to feed a growing world Demand-driven planning and forecasting A holistic and transformative approach This article is an extract from Performance, Volume 9, Issue 1, February 2017. The full journal is available at Activity-based costing Insights from E.ON Energie Deutschland ey.com/performance If you could see the future, would you change the past? Data collection is evolving from hand-written notes and manual field analysis to automatic data capture via equipment, software, remote sensors and aerial drones. Digital agriculture and big rates and distribution methods will not Investment data hold the promise to feed be nearly enough to feed the population. It is generally acknowledged that digital in AgTech in 2015: a growing world sustainably agriculture and big data will be needed By 2050, the global population is expected to meet these demands. more than to increase by 40% to 9.6 billion people. In order to feed this drastically increasing population, the agriculture industry will US$4.6b 1. L. Burwood-Taylor, “Agriculture Technology Investment need to produce 70% more food while only Storms to $4.6bn in 2015 as Global Investors Take 2 Note,” AgFunderNews, 2016, Source: L. Burwood-Taylor, “Agriculture using 5% more land. This, coupled with https://agfundernews.com/agriculture-technology- investment-storms-to-4-6bn-in-2015-as-global-investors- Technology Investment Storms to growing environmental and regulatory take-note5380.html, accessed November 2016. $4.6bn in 2015 as Global Investors pressures, poses a daunting challenge 2. How to feed the world in 2050, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2009, http://www.fao. Take Note,” AgFunderNews. for the industry. Current production org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/expert_paper/How_to_ Feed_the_World_in_2050.pdf, accessed November 2016. 85 Volume 9 │ Issue 1 Providing insight and analysis for business professionals Digital agriculture How to feed a growing world Demand-driven planning and forecasting A holistic and transformative approach This article is an extract from Performance, Volume 9, Issue 1, February 2017. The full journal is available at Activity-based costing Insights from E.ON Energie Deutschland ey.com/performance If you could see the future, would you change the past? Digital agriculture: helping to feed a growing world Software and algorithms are being created to leverage data to increase yields, improve farm profitability and increase farm sustainability. Investors are taking note. The third agricultural revolution Digital agriculture is widely recognized levels previously unattainable, and as the third great revolution of modern are now conventional in developed agricultural. The introduction and countries across the world. implementation of mechanization While Ag 1.0 and Ag 2.0 definitely (1900 to 1930) and genetic drove significant changes in agriculture, modification (1990 to 2005) are we believe the Ag 3.0 will be the most referred to as Ag 1.0 and Ag 2.0 transformative and disruptive, not respectively. Both revolutions drove only on the farm, but across the entire efficiency, yield and profitability to agriculture and food value chain. 86 Volume 9 │ Issue 1 Volume 9 │ Issue 1 Providing insight and analysis for business professionals Digital agriculture How to feed a growing world Demand-driven planning and forecasting A holistic and transformative approach This article is an extract from Performance, Volume 9, Issue 1, February 2017. The full journal is available at Activity-based costing Insights from E.ON Energie Deutschland ey.com/performance If you could see the future, would you change the past? Digital agriculture will While the benefits of digital agriculture change farming are compelling, it has been met by significant challenges, for example, The impact of digital agriculture on the difficulty using software, data usage field is well documented and researched. concerns, disparate and propriety From variable rate application to real- data formats and an unclear return on time NDVI visualization (i.e., the index investment. Agribusiness has struggled for visualizing vegetation health), farming to provide immediate, tangible results will forever
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