The use of robots, drones and AI tools in agriculture is already paying off on 42 percent of the world's cropland. This could increase to 50 percent in the next 20 years and to as much as 75 percent if every country tightened environmental regulations. If every country loosened its regulations it would fall to 31 percent. These are the main findings from an international study led by the University of Bonn, which is the first to estimate the profitability of smart farming worldwide. What is more, high-tech agriculture often proves profitable precisely in parts of the world struggling with environmental problems such as water stress and overfertilization. The results of the study have been published in the journal PNAS.
European and US farms are increasingly turning into high-tech companies: drones spot pest infestations and send their data to agricultural machinery, which then sprays pesticides in specific areas; robots remove weeds before they can cause trouble; and irrigation systems track soil moisture and water the roots only where water is needed. "These smart farming technologies have the potential to make crop farming more sustainable and environmentally friendly," explains Professor David Wuepper from the University of Bonn.
However, Wuepper also knows that switching to smart-farming technologies may not make economic sense for every farm, at least in the short term, because they do not come cheap—quite apart from the expertise required to get them set up. There is also significant variation in local conditions, from labor costs and environmental regulations through to the availability of training. "So we wanted to know where precision agriculture is particularly worthwhile in economic terms," says Shahrear Roman, a doctoral student in Wuepper's research group.
The results of their study published in PNAS show that smart farming already pays off on 42 percent of the world´s cropland. The profitability of these technologies is unevenly distributed worldwide, though.
Smart farming profitability is unevenly distributed worldwide
The economic benefit is greatest in areas where income and education levels are high, fields are big and environmental regulations are strict, such as Western Europe, Canada, the US and Australia. One reason is that these parts of the world often apply large quantities of fertilizer and pesticides. "So money can be saved by only applying these products where you really need to," Roman says. And, because labor also costs more in these places, using machinery and robots makes good sense.
By contrast, the potential of smart farming is currently limited in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. "This is partly because the available technologies are poorly suited to small-scale agriculture," points out Wuepper, who is also a member of both the Sustainable Futures Transdisciplinary Research Area (TRA) and the PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence. "At the moment, the equipment is being developed with a focus on large, capital-intensive operations in North America and Europe. Going forward, agricultural research and development should be stepping up the search for solutions that will be a sensible option for small farms too."
A world map for five technologies
For their study, the researchers began by looking at where in the world smart-farming technologies are already being employed. There are hardly any databases out there that record this information systematically. "So we wrote to more than 8,000 smart farming experts around the world, asking them whether they knew of places in their area where these technologies were already being used profitably," Roman explains. The researchers also combed through the scientific literature to find farms that were already using precision farming methods.
This gave the researchers a list of more than 4,000 locations where smart irrigation systems, weeding robots or drone-based analyses are already in use. They then used machine-learning algorithms to investigate what underlying conditions favor a switch to smart farming.
Strong environmental governance goes hand in hand with faster uptake
"We found that smart farming already pays off where environmental governance is strongest. It is by far the most important predictor in our models," Roman says.
"We've now taken these findings and extrapolated how the use of smart-farming technologies might change in the future in each region," Wuepper explains. The researchers also considered regional economic development forecasts in their models, ultimately producing a world map that illustrates where precision agriculture has the greatest potential. They also broke their results down by technology category: autonomous irrigation systems; weeding robots; drones and other approaches that map fields and identify where action is needed; machinery that decides for itself how much fertilizer or pesticide to apply; and GPS steering systems that keep machines on precise tracks and avoid overlaps.
The study also maps where smart-farming could do the most environmental good, by showing where the technologies are profitable and where the problems they can address are most severe. For example, smart irrigation systems are often profitable precisely in those regions that are increasingly battling water shortages.
"Ecological and economic benefits often go hand in hand. But they do not arrive on their own: without policy, most of the environmental gain stays on the table," Wuepper concludes.
Participating institutions and funding:
The University of Bonn, ETH Zurich and the University of California, Berkeley (US) were involved in the study, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence (EXC 2070, 390732324) as well as by the European Research Council (Grant 101075824).
The PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn
The purpose of PhenoRob is to achieve a sustainable, technology-driven transformation of agriculture. Such transformation is of the utmost importance for Germany and the entire world. This Cluster of Excellence focuses on developing innovative, sustainable cultivation systems and advancing new technologies such as robotics, AI and sensor-based phenotyping for the resource-efficient production of plant foods. Interdisciplinary teams are studying new approaches for reducing pollutant input into the environment, exploiting farming automation potential and finding cutting-edge solutions for agricultural systems in Germany. Embedded within the Faculty of Agricultural, Nutritional, and Engineering Sciences, this internationally prominent Cluster of Excellence, formed in 2019, represents "Agriculture 4.0." PhenoRob has already given rise to several market-ready products.
