The agricultural digital revolution: the farmer as protagonist

 

The agricultural digital revolution: the farmer as protagonist

We are at the gates of the 4th agrarian revolution. The way we are going to produce food will change dramatically in the coming years. A necessary agricultural digital revolution in which the farmer must be the protagonist.

New technologies applied to the agricultural and livestock sector will cause a profound change throughout the entire agri-food chain, affecting the way we produce food, how the different links in the chain are related, how it is marketed, etc.

The key to this revolution is data: data enables production to be optimized and improves profitability for food producers. Profitability allows improving their quality of life and allowing the desired generational change.

At the center of this revolution must be the farmer since,n this scientific agriculture, will not only produce food, he will produce the data that will move the entire agri-food chain. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an ecosystem that allows the farmer to participate and access all these digital tools, regardless of the size of the farm.

If we lose the train of digitization, if we make this mistake, we will see how our agriculture, and our producers, will lose competitiveness in a globalized market. A loss of weight in these markets could put our agriculture “out of play”, causing a loss of the social fabric that backbones the rural environment and endows it with life.

The world is changing. A decade ago, the most valuable companies moved into the energy field. Now the most valuable companies have to do with technology, and more specifically with the digital world.

The agricultural world is no stranger to this change. The challenges we face are numerous: achieving a smart and resilient agricultural sector, producing more food while adapting to new climatic conditions, strengthening the socio-economic fabric of rural areas, and adapting food production to the demands of one consumer at a time. more aware of sustainability. Challenges that can only be addressed through digitization and the adaptation of new technologies in our sector.

But steps are already being taken toward that technological future of agriculture. Digital enabling technologies have already been identified for the agricultural sector (IoT, Big Data, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Cloud Computing) and the sector has accessible technologies at its disposal (satellite technology from the Copernicus program, GPS, drones, sensory robots ).

All these technologies must be embraced by all the actors in the agri-food chain, from the producer (the center of this revolution) to the distributors and the industry, through technology companies, administrations, advisory entities, and research and training centers.

As we have seen, we are on the verge of a few years of change. Changes that will not happen in 30 or 40 years, changes that are beginning now, and that in the next five years will leave a very deep mark on the sector. However, all change, and more if it is disruptive, bring with it a series of challenges, threats, and opportunities, which must be taken into account.

On the one hand, we find opportunities. Digitization will allow farmers to get to know more closely that consumer who is at the other end of the agri-food chain, and thus be able to adapt their offer to what the market demands. On the other hand, it will allow them to have a more precise X-ray of what is happening on their farm in real-time, being able to adjust the use of inputs, make decisions with precision and achieve greater production and profitability. Finally, it will allow them to simplify administrative tasks and make it easier to comply with everything that the CAP requires of them.

On the other hand, we have challenges. We have seen that the digitization of other sectors has brought with it the emergence of new actors with great integration power (if not absorption). Therefore, the main challenge facing our primary sector is to maintain that productive fabric based on professional farmers that form the rural environment. In addition, in the current aging situation of the agricultural professional sector, it is faced with the barrier of a lack of desire to invest in something "new", either because of the high cost of technological solutions or because of the inertia of continuing to do so. things "as they were done before. "

Other major challenges that need to be addressed and this time from the ad services companies are, respectively, reducing the digital gap that rural areas present (all digital tools need minimum coverage and speed for their correct operation), and digital moving the interoperability of the data generated in the day-to-day of all the links of the agri-food chain, allowing them to decide who to work with, and not end up being captive of platforms and/or closed technologies, which in the end run the risk of becoming obsolete.

Once the main challenges and opportunities have been analyzed, we can see that one fact is true: the need for vertical cooperation between all agents of the agri-food chain. Therefore, it is necessary to create data sharing models (remember that data is the true value of digital agriculture) that balance the added value throughout the entire chain.

For this, it is necessary to establish good practices between the different links in the chain, such as the Code of Conduct launched by the EU in April 2018, on the exchange of agricultural data, in which it is advisable to create contractual agreements where it is perfectly reflected who owns the data generated, how said data can be accessed and who has control over it, data protection measures and practices that promote transparency, precisely define the privacy of said data and security, as well as responsibility and intellectual property rights, all aimed at protecting all actors in the value chain.

If you are interested in knowing more about aspects of this digital revolution that is already being noticed in the agri-food sector,

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