WEF Report: Agritech: Shaping Agriculture in Emerging Economies, today and tomorrow

• May 17, 2024
• admin

Due to their transforming impact on the global agriculture sector, the role of digital technologies is more essential than ever today. This report from the World Economic Forum takes an overview of the role of Fourth Industrial Revolution technology in shaping the agriculture ecosystem. For this purpose, agritech solutions have been divided into four categories:

• Intelligent crop planning, involves utilising AI-based models to create a market-oriented, sustainable crop plan

• Smart farming, the use of AI and other technologies to increase the efficiency of farm operations

• Farmgate-to-fork, addressing underlying issues of farming through technology. Examples of these underlying issues are crop loss between farm and market or lack of quality standards

• Data governance, everything related to the collection, management or distribution of data

After an overview of the currently existing agritech solutions, the report goes into depth about some challenges and issues in adopting agritech, such as the unwillingness of small farmers to adopt these solutions due to the lack of clearness in the returns. At the same time, the paper highlights the need to implement agritech on a larger scale to deal with the challenges brought forth by climate change and natural disasters. A multistakeholder approach, including governments, the private sector – including start-ups and investors – academia and civil society, is needed to scale up agritech solutions.