The Future of Agriculture: How Software Development Services Are Transforming the Industry

17th September 2024

Agriculture was and is the most crucial field for human civilization. It represents the primary source of subsistence for humans. If humanity ever loses agricultural capacities, a global catastrophe will be inevitable. For this reason, we’re adamant that the agriculture field will remain relevant for thousands of years.

Despite the tremendous improvements in crop production, hundreds of millions of individuals still face food insecurity. Many individuals who live in poverty don’t eat enough. Thus, the agriculture market is still under capacity: we must produce at least 10 to 20% more output to properly feed most of humankind.

The Green Revolution has greatly expanded crop yields all over the globe. It brought our agriculture to peak efficiency, never seen in human history. The core problem is that revolutions of this kind occur rarely. They’re more of an anomaly than a rule in human history. Does this mean that our crop yields will remain constant? Not necessarily. In our opinion, the future of agriculture will depend on agriculture software development services. Their core appeal is the ability to promote marginal improvements in the daily practices of farmers in different countries. In this article, we will, thus, look at the future of agriculture through the lens of software development.

How Can Development Help Manufacturing?

Here are some core improvements that manufacturing can bring about:

1% improvements facilitated by information access

Manufacturing relies on a tremendous number of factors. Farmers must consider weather, water availability, soil quality, pest infestations, and even crop potency. At least one of those aspects likely has some inefficiencies. Therefore, a technology that can point towards those inefficiencies is among the best ways to promote improvements within the field, despite the absence of major technological revolutions.

To understand the logic of this method, we’ll have to turn our attention toward the field that has nothing to do with agriculture. In the early 2000s, the British cycling team could not win any awards. Within several years, it became one of the strongest teams in the world, winning multiple Olympic medals.

What was the secret behind its ability to improve rapidly? 1% gains in efficiency. In 2002, the team hired a new trainer who started to focus on small problems encountered by the team. He dealt with seemingly minor issues such as seat ergonomics or even shoe-wearing techniques. The removal of dozens of inefficiencies ultimately transformed the team into a record-beating organization.

Computers are a technology for agriculture that can enable you to achieve the same effects. As we’ve mentioned before, agriculture is very complex. It has a lot of connections and small details that affect the everyday functioning of agriculture businesses. This information is typically complex and almost impossible for average humans to analyze. We simply are incapable of seeing this much complexity. Software, however, can process much more than humans ever do.

So, what does this mean? You can use AI-driven tools to analyze every aspect of your business and generate custom reports for you. These reports can summarize the core data about your agricultural company and even offer some advice on improvements from the get-go. By simply reading them, you’ll already be able to establish a clear list of potential long-term improvements in your products. If you follow those improvements and gradually implement them, you’ll quickly see significant positive changes in your business operations. Ultimately, the main goal of the software is to give you the ability to improve your firm through 1% everyday gains.

Automation of the core processes

Another problem of the modern agricultural field is the tremendous number of manual processes within it. In many cases, this means that businesses have to invest in large-scale workforces. This approach to labor is irrational and negative for all stakeholders. On the one hand, businesses encounter the risk of human errors and low efficiency. On the other hand, workers have to engage in tedious and repetitive tasks.

Automation is a solution to this task. How exactly does it work? Automation through robotics and AI dramatically decreases the need to invest human resources into repetitive manual tasks. For instance, you can use AI to reduce irrigation and crop collection workforce needs. Instead, diverting the workforce towards more complex goals like data analysis and, more importantly, gradual process improvement is possible.

Many people fear that this approach to automation will significantly boost unemployment. We don’t think so. The nature of competition will force most companies to invest in gradual improvements constantly. These gradual improvements, in turn, will require massive workforces for more complex tasks. In the long term, automation will gradually improve living standards among most agricultural employees. They’ll do more productive jobs requiring a higher level of education than in the past.

Compensating for natural disasters

It’s becoming evident that global warming is accelerating, and as a result, the Earth is warming faster and faster. Increases in global temperatures will inevitably lead to decreased crop yields. The core goal of modern technology is to help us avoid this problem. Improvements in water usage, for example, will significantly boost our capability to produce crops despite the growing temperature. Computer tools can help optimize this aspect completely. Thus, investments in this technology are becoming vital from the business standpoint and in light of the upcoming global changes.

Conclusion

To summarize, investments in agricultural software are essential in the modern world. This type of software transforms the industry by promoting automation and constant 1% yield improvement. Do you want to create your agricultural solution? In that case, working with experienced companies like Keenethics is the best option. Your goal is to look for partners with advanced agricultural development and coding experience.