Future frontiers in Agtech & Geospatial technologies

Published on by in Technology

With the advent of more technologies including GIS, GPS, GNSS and LIDAR, farming has undergone greater transformation. Precision farming, improved input use efficiency, adopting sustainable practices that minimize farming’s ecological footprint, better crop and yield and soil mapping, better and accurate weather forecasting (such as drought) to improve responsiveness and the list of potential applications of geospatial technologies is getting only longer. These are essential components in transforming the food value chain but cannot yield holistic benefits without other key elements that are necessary such as an appropriate regulatory framework to tackle issues including privacy, and a conducive policy environment that fosters innovation. Use of any technology will remain futile when not used in sync with other branches of sciences such as agronomy, genetics, post-harvest practices, storage, transportation, marketing and distribution. Hence, before proclaiming these technologies as silver-bullets to solve all the issues related to food insecurity or disaster management, one needs to understand some of the underlying rationale of the whole argument of using geospatial technologies. The whole food value chain and the entities involved therein have just woken up to the sea of opportunities and benefits these technologies can offer as showcased in the GeoAgri 2016, Kuala Lumpur. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-frontiers-agtech-geospatial-technologies-raghavan-sampathkumar?trk=pulse_spock-articles

Taxonomy