Smart Farming Technologies for Profitability and Sustainability.

It is believed that the application of precision agriculture and related technologies such as robotics and software for farm management and decision making (Smart Farming Technologies, SFTs) will bring many benefits, including more efficient use of inputs and a reduced impact on the environment (“more with less”). The goal of our work was to create an inventory of SFTs. We inventoried SFTs that are available commercially by surveying manufacturers, providers of equipment and services, and agricultural consultants. We inventoried SFTs that can be expected to become available commercially by examining applied research projects. Finally we reviewed the recent scientific literature to inventory SFTs that are in the early stages of development. We identified and analyzed more than 1000 SFTs. Each SFT was described in terms of where it can be applied (which crops or cropping systems, geography, farm size, crop production stage), what benefits it is expected to bring (e.g. increased productivity, increased profitability, decreased emissions, decreased soil compaction), and how readily it might be expected to be adopted. Preliminary results indicate that the majority of commercially available SFTs lead to higher productivity and profitability, sometimes with reduced emissions as a side-effect. There is a focus on nutrient management and crop protection. There are few SFTs that directly increase sustainability (e.g. biodiversity, soil compaction). Scientific research on SFTs often focuses on sensing technologies, but relatively little on action. This seems to indicate that there is a knowledge gap between measuring the status of crop and soils on the one hand, and using that information to make practical decisions in farming on the other hand. Commercially available SFTs often target larger farms, while SFTs investigated in applied research projects are applicable on smaller farms as well as larger farms. The website https://www.smart-akis.com/ gives access to the SFT inventory and is the starting point for networking activities between farmers, advisers, and researchers.