I have friends who are curious. But because they are rarely involved in the tech space some buzz words sound bigger than they are worth exploring. In my attempt to un-buzz these words I will help us explore the AgriTech landscape.
The AgriTech industry has been growing at a rate of over 10% per year since 2010. It's expected that by 2020 it will be worth $1 trillion annually.
The defining question driving the innovation in the Agricultural space is “How can we use tech to improve our lives?” The relationship between Technology and Agriculture has existed through industrial revolutions and now into the information age. In this article, we explore opportunities in the present age and technology as we presently apply it. In simpler terms, we explore AgriTech from the perspective of “information”. And as we expand some touching points will look into mechanization but all are driven through information about the specific agricultural activity.
There are many different ways to define AgriTech but here are some common ones:
- The application of information & communication technologies to agriculture;
- Agriculture as an ICT sector;
- Agricultural Information Systems ;
- Technology applied to agricultural products or services;
- Technological solutions used within the agricultural value chain;
- New business models based on technological innovation;
- Use of new technologies in farming;
- Development of new tools/technologies to support sustainable intensification of crop production systems;
- Application of emerging technologies such as big data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc.;
- Combination of traditional and modern techniques with advanced science and engineering knowledge;
The list is quite long, but this gives us a picture of how deep the ecosystem is and what the term tries to represent and contain. To make this easier to understand, always ask yourself how is information being used in the process to help the agricultural activity scale, efficient and accessible.
First published on Substack.