Hello! Halo! Kumusta! Xin chào! สวัสดี! မင်္ဂလာပါ! ជំរាបសួរ! ສະບາຍດີ!

⌛ Agriculture has been around for ~13,000 years, and—even then—it was only widely established ~7,000 years ago. While this might sound like a very long time, you need to put this into context… modern humans (i.e. Homo Sapiens) have been around for ~200,000 years, so this means that if we were to fit the history of modern humans into a 24-hour day, agriculture would’ve only been around for the last 50-90 minutes of that day; that’s a long time that our ancestors were only hunting & gathering for sustenance! (Johns Hopkins’ Food Systems Primer).

🚜 Over the course of history, farming evolved to encompass more advanced tools & technologies to make agriculture less labor-intensive. This led to a massive reduction in the number of farmers for developed countries like the US, which saw the number of people employed in agriculture peak around 1910, then bottom out in absolute terms over the last 20 years or so, even in spite of population expansion. This is thanks in large part to improvements in agriculture technologies & techniques.

📊 However, this trend is not necessarily playing out all over the world…

📉 As the chart above depicts, less-developed countries are actually seeing an absolute increase in the number of people employed in the agriculture sector compared to OECD (developed) countries. Why is that? Well many developing countries are constrained by resources, have bad land rights, and/or poor infrastructure, which leads to inefficient, subsistence-level farming. This means that many of these societies are still practicing agriculture as if they’re in the middle ages…

🤖 Anyways, not to drone on about agriculture agriculture, in this issue, we’re going to discuss the future (and more efficient version) of agriculture: precision agriculture.

🤔 What’s the deal with precision agriculture?

⏮️ In our sustainable agriculture issue, we discussed how conventional agriculture are environmentally unsustainable due to techniques such as monocropping, petrochemical-based fertilizers, and massive water projects; the 20th century is defined by the dissemination of such industrial-scale agricultural practices—particularly in developed countries.

🔭 In the 21st century, we’re now seeing different types of technologies through precision agriculture. Precision agriculture goes beyond conventional agriculture to enhance yields by optimizing the application of inputs (e.g. water, seeds, fertilizer, etc.) through the utilization of advanced technologies & data.

Precision agriculture technologies include:

• 🛰️ GPS and Satellite Imagery: For efficient monitoring of crop health and land use, optimizing water usage, and reducing the carbon footprint.

• 📡 IoT and Sensors: For real-time monitoring of soil moisture, nutrient levels, and environmental conditions to support data-driven decision-making.

• 🚁 Drones: For aerial surveys, crop monitoring, and targeted application of pesticides and fertilizers to reduce waste and environmental impact.

• 🧠 Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: For predictive analytics to forecast weather patterns, pest infestations, and crop yields, enabling better planning and resource management.

💚 Such techniques can mitigate greenhouse gases while increasing farm productivity—a win-win for the planet and profits (MDPI, 2017). The impacts of adopting such practices have broader implications for environmental efficiency though, according to research conducted by AEM, they found that farmers utilizing precision agriculture techniques realized the following impacts:

• 4% increase in crop production, which corresponded to 2 million acres of cropland avoided due to more efficient use of existing land

• 7% increase in fertilizer placement efficiency

• 9% reduction in herbicide and pesticide use, meaning 30 million fewer pounds of herbicide

• 6% reduction or 100 million fewer gallons of fossil fuel

• 4% reduction in water use, amounting to enough water saved to fill 750,000 Olympic-size swimming pools (AEM, 2023)

⛈️ Southeast Asia’s agricultural sector has already experienced vulnerabilities due to climate change, resulting in significant production losses of about USD21B due to extreme weather events between 2008 and 2018. As if that wasn’t destructive enough, the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated these issues, causing a 3.1% reduction in agricultural production and a 1.4% decrease in GDP in 2020 (ADB, 2021). Leveraging the advanced technologies and data analytics in precision agriculture to optimize resource allocation, enabling farmers to make informed decisions regarding irrigation, fertilization, and crop protection can help Southeast Asia’s agriculture sector become more climate resilient (FAO, 2023).

There are three particular areas in Southeast Asia that precision agriculture can help with:

1. 🌱 Soil degradation: Southeast Asia’s coastal regions—where populations are concentrated—are already threatened by soil salinization due to sea level rises, storm surges and groundwater intrusion (see below chart). Thus, it’s important to safeguard soils from becoming degraded by overapplication of fertilizer and/or pesticides.

   

   Source: European Commission, JRC & FAO, Soil Atlas of Asia (2023)

2. 🪚 Land use: Southeast Asia is home to around 15% of the world’s tropical forests but deforestation is threatening this (Earth.org, 2022).
   

   

   from Our World in Data

   Inefficient cultivation leads to deforestation because the less production per acre that a farmer has, the more acreage that they’ll need to leverage to get the same amount of production compared to a more efficient farmer. While deforestation rates have slowed considerably (Global Forest Watch, 2023) in the last few years—particularly in Indonesia—more needs to be done and more efficient agriculture through precision agriculture can help.

3. 💦 Water scarcity: the agriculture sector is very thirsty, moreso than you might realize…

🤝 To be clear, we aren’t advocating that farming in the 21st century only be driven by the high-tech precision agriculture. As Agros founder, Max Nelen, mentioned in our sustainable agriculture issue: our ancestors leveraged agricultural techniques that were more planet-friendly; thus we need to marry the wisdom of the ancients with the knowledge of the future.

📚 Want to learn more about this topic?

1. “Precision Agriculture in View of Climate Change towards Long Term Sustainability” from ResearchGate

2. “Digital Learning Series” from GrowAsia

📢 Shout-out to Beehive Drones!

✈️ Beehive Drones, established in 2017 by Indonesian students based in Manchester (UK), is dedicated to revolutionizing various industries using advanced drone technology.

🌏 In their endeavor to enhance efficiency and promote sustainability, they actively address climate challenges by crafting drone solutions tailored for environmental conservation and resource management. Their drone systems, utilized in precision agriculture and forestry monitoring, provide businesses with data-driven insights to streamline operations while reducing their ecological footprint. Beehive Drones operates across various sectors including forestry, agriculture, mining, construction, real estate, aerospace, and defense. Additionally, their portfolio encompasses diverse projects, from utilizing drone technology for rice production estimation in Subang Regency to evaluating carbon emissions in rice plants in Sleman DIY and conducting Carbon Accounting with Canopy Height Model (CHM) for mangrove forests, among others.

☎️ Beehive Drones welcomes partnerships and collaborations with individuals and organizations who share their passion for leveraging technology to drive environmental conservation and sustainable development. For inquiries and collaboration opportunities, please reach out to them at [email protected]. Join them on their journey as they continue to pioneer transformative solutions for a more sustainable future.🤩✨

🗞️ Recent News

🎙️ Interview with Adilla of Agrilabs

💡 Why were you initially inspired to tackle the precision agriculture in the first place?

📈 We have realized that the demand for agricultural products is constantly increasing due to global population growth and consumption trends. This realization has inspired us to address this global challenge by focusing on precision agriculture. Considering the multitude of demands on land for housing and industries, it becomes crucial to balance land usage for nature, forests, and agriculture. Precision agriculture emerges as one of the most effective methods to responsibly manage the limited land resources on our planet. 

🫛 Agrilabs.id, as a homegrown agritech startup from Indonesia, excites us even more because the agricultural landscape in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, is dominantly traditional. Our co-founding team comes from a combination of research (Ph.D. in agriculture) and tech-business backgrounds, which makes it easier for us to understand the nature of agriculture while simultaneously sustaining our work through business. The vision to democratize precision agriculture practices for smallholder farmers with technology keeps us awake.

🛠️ How exactly is Agrilabs taking action against this problem?

📡 We are embarking on the development of AI-Remote Sensing technology to optimize agriculture production with more prudent agricultural inputs. The combination of deep learning and remote sensing will enable us to extract crucial spatial insights, such as plant nutrient status, soil surface moisture, and plant growth stage index. This allows us to provide farmers or plantation management with precise recommendations for water, fertilizer, and other treatments tailored to specific areas. We can offer these insights at a lower cost, faster, and with greater scalability.

🌾 Additionally, we have already processed more than 21,000 hectares of palm oil plantations (both corporate and smallholder) in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua. This has helped them apply more prudent fertilization practices to prevent soil degradation from excessive fertilizer use. Furthermore, we have assisted approximately 10 hectares of corn farms by defining the most suitable irrigation mapping for achieving optimal efficiency. Exciting news from last month: we have expanded our services to include sugarcane as our next agricultural commodity. We will monitor the growth stages of multi-cropland sugarcane to cater to this new venture.

😲 What is a misconception or surprising fact about precision agriculture?

🧑🏻‍🌾 The surprising fact is that many applications of precision agriculture focus too much on the details, sacrificing cost-effectiveness (overkill). This is why it's often perceived as only applicable to large-scale farms or corporate agriculture operations. Precision agriculture technologies can help farmers of all sizes optimize inputs, reduce costs, increase yields, and minimize environmental impact. Therefore, it's important to recognize that precision agriculture is accessible and adaptable to a wide range of farming practices and scales.

🎬 What actions can readers support Agrilabs?

🥾 We are bootstrapping and looking for pre-seed investment to support our tech adoption and implementation numbers among mid-scale and smallholder farmers. We already have ~11,000 Ha plantations that are suitable for implementation.

🤝 We also invite you to unlock any partnership opportunity (fertilizer producer/distributor; palm oil/corn/sugarcane) by contacting [email protected].

🦸🏻 What do you do when you’re not saving the world?

📺 I love to read biographies and watch documentary films.

⏭️ Next week, we’ll be continuing our agriculture series by discussing food security & waste—which are two sides of the same coin 🪙. Stay tuned!

❓ Did you enjoy this week’s issue? If yes, please do forward to your friends who would enjoy the read as well. Also, feel free to let us know what you thought by giving us feedback at [email protected].

🌊 SEA you next week!

Karina & Massimiliano