The Digitilization of Farming

It is the most important task for mankind – and the most difficult one at the same time as it requires an effort akin to the ancient conundrum of ‘squaring the circle’: according to UN estimates an additional two to three billion people must be supplied with sufficient quantities of healthy food by 2050. At the same time, land, water and soil resources are becoming scarce, more space needs to be devoted to nature conservation and species protection, and for the sake of climate protection there must be drastic reductions in the use of fossil fuel based agrochemicals. In other words, we need to produce more with less. ‘Precision farming’, i.e. more effective agricultural methods supported by digitisation, can contribute to achieving this objective, or so say the protagonists of the agricultural industry as well as many supporters in the policy arena.

But what does this most recent high-tech push in farming mean for smallholder farmers in developing countries, who are the ones who supply food to the largest proportion by far of the world population? Will they too benefit from ‘big data’? Or will this development merely deepen the digital divide between the poor and the rich?

More data - less effort

In the industrialised nations, many producers have had WiFi in their barns for years. They buy software not only to keep computerised records for subsidy schemes but also to manage their farmland. At harvest time, when the golden stream of grain pours from the combine harvester into waiting farm trucks, ground sensors calculate exactly how many bushels were produced per unit area. The farmer can monitor the yield on a console in the harvester’s cabin while driving across the field. The data are simultaneously transferred to the home computer to be used for crop planning in the following season. In springtime, the machinery receives satellite signals indicating where fertiliser can be used more economically. Sensors measure the plants’ chlorophyll content. Fertiliser use is then adjusted upwards or downwards based on the plants’ needs.

In the future, however, a lot more data are to be collected, by the square centimetre for every little section of a field, and coupled with existing knowledge on cultivars and soils and up-to-date weather information. Manufacturers of agricultural machinery as well as the seed companies enthusiastically proclaim that they will then offer even more precisely targeted virtual crop management recommendations, individually tailored to every single farm. Instead of broad-scale pesticide applications, for example, measurements will be used to deliver spot-treatments to individual plants that need help to deal with pests. If the advertising is to be believed, farmers will be able to remotely check the situation on their own 1,000 ha on a screen from the comfort of their bed in the early morning. Or they will receive mobile text messages such as, ‘Preferably do not apply fertiliser today as it rained in the morning!’

If governments remove air space constraints, farmers may be able to avail of yet another tool: agricultural drones. From a birds’ eye perspective these hard-working mini-helicopters gather data on soil moisture or insect infestations, for example, and one day they may even sow seed without compacting the soil. Waxing lyrical, Martin Richenhagen, CEO of agricultural machinery manufacturer AGCO Corporation, dreams of remote-controlled robots working in vegetable fields and vineyards. The data revolution will increasingly turn the craft of tillage farming and livestock production into an industrial production process, he says in the Die Zeit weekly. ‘The farm will become a factory.’

A competition for knowledge and power

The potential social repercussions of digitisation are not often discussed. Worldwide, seed producers and companies in the chemical industry, manufacturers of agricultural machinery and weather data start-ups are currently joining forces in new consortia with a view to selling more knowledge and fewer chemicals in times to come. Who will have control over the data collected in the future? Will farmers slip into a new dependency?

When land is managed digitally there are not only environmental benefits but also time savings and thus also efficiency gains and potential further concentration. Structural change might accelerate, as Martin Richenhagen hints: ‘In the past it was said that farmers must grow or perish. Today we say digitalise or perish.’ Even more farms could vanish, with big data becoming another driver of migration away from rural areas. This is already a problem in the industrialised countries, as the (agri-)cultural diversity vanishes along with the people. Competition is even tougher in India or Brazil: as a result of unfair competition, increasing numbers of farming families end up in the slums of the major cities and therefore often in poverty.

‘In the past it was said that farmers must grow or perish. Today we say digitalise or perish.’

Opportunities arising from connectivity – an illusion

Many companies, scientists and governments take a very different view: in their eyes, developing and emerging countries can also benefit from new communication and digitisation options in order to revive their agricultural sectors which have been neglected for decades. Simple services are already being offered to smallholder farmers in some regions: they can receive weather forecasts by text message or find out which of the merchants is currently offering the best prices for their products. Apps are designed in a way that can be understood by illiterate people. There are also plans for online training programmes on sustainable production methods.

However, it is an illusion to believe that all this will deliver a major development push. Even though WiFi, mobile phone networks and mobile phones are now available even in the most remote regions of Africa, only one in 10 people actually own a smartphone and those who do mostly live in the cities. Laptops and tablets are even less widespread in the countryside. Where farmers do not have the financial resources to buy a small tractor and where there are no banks to give them a loan, digital upgrading is not an obvious consideration. And what is the use of up-to-date market data if the data cannot be accessed because there is no electricity or if there are no transport routes to get the products to the right place at the right time?

It is possible that text messaging and Internet services are attractive to young people in rural Africa, Asia and South America and that these services may encourage them to develop a greater commitment to their villages. However, the digitisation hype follows an old pattern of development policy: slick technical solutions are advocated while basic social challenges are neglected.

This article was published (in German) on 15 September 2016 as a contribution to the column ‘Die Netzdebatte’ (Debating the net) on the homepage of the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Agency for Civic Education):