Digitization in Agriculture INTRODUCTION Current Scenario The great demand for food, limited supply of natural resources, and uncertainties in agriculture produc- tivity are some of the key driving trends impacting the food and the agricultural market of today’s world, ‘According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affaits report (DESA, U., 2017), the world is likely to witness a surge in the overall population from 7.6 billion in 2018 to 9.8 billion by 2050. Such 1 vast growth in the population is expected to come forward as an influential factor for the food demand around the globe, Another key factor for the upcoming growth in food supply demand is the expected 12 percent increase in the urban population of the world from 2014 to 2050. Predictions reported that the world may face water scarcity of 40% along with the deterioration of more than 20 percent cultivable land by 2030. To fulfill the cereal demand in the world by 2050, its production has to be increased by 3 billion tonnes (Alexandratos et al., 2012). Also by 2030, the livestock demand is likely to be increased by a margin of 80 percent and going up to the level of 200 percent by 2050, There exist around 570 million smallholder farms around the world and 28 percent of the workforce at a global level which comes from the agriculture and food sector, As evident from all these facts and figures, the agriculture industry is a sector which needs the continuous thrustof technological innovations to feed the growing population for the years to come. Even though it has been shown that conventional tools are sufficient to meet the rising food demand, the actual truth comes from the report that estimates that nearly 821 million people still suffer from hunger due to lack of food supply. This fact itself gives rise to a big question of how to meet the food requirements of 9 billion people by 2050 in a sustainable and inclusive manner. With all these things the world needs introduction of the new scaled-up transformed agricultural ecosystem al a rapid pace as shown in Figure 1. Industry 4.0 (De ClercqM. et al., 2018) which is also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution is responsible for transmuting various sectors through bring- ing in innovations through these disruptive digital technologies, The agricultural industry is also not a special case which is being exempted from this process of digital transformation. This transformation doesn’t seem possible in the past only because of the unavailability of the information related to the basic requirements and field challenges that includes inputs like seed, fertilizers, microfinance, or price accessibility from smallholder farmers. With the technological revolution around the world, the smallholder farmers are getting acquainted with the latest technological advancements in mobile communication through smartphones & other related technologies. All these are contributing to the development of the new digitally driven agrifood systems (UNICEF, A. et al, 2018). All of these implementations being scaled up could bring the revolution in the agriculture sector which is for sure only possible through digitalization, Rural communities have been the most significant source of the next wave of mobile connections where the majority of the population is occupied in agricultural activities daily (Palmer, T. et al., 2017) Around 70 percent of the poorest 20 percent population of developing countries have access to these mobile technologies (World Bank Group., 2016) If we see on a global level, 40 percent of the population has access to internet services and there are also ongoing digital initiatives to connect the leftover population especially those from rural areas of developing nations. Over the next 10 years, Industry 4.0 is likely to bring drastic changes in the system of agrifood markets, ‘This is possible only through the revolutionary digital technologies like ArtificialDigitization in Agriculture Figure 1. Classification of Agriculture Ecosystem re meget oon Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Internet of Things (oT), This change is also because of several other fac- tors like the changes in the preferences of consumers and their demands, introduction of e-commerce and its impact on global agri-food trade, changes in the climate, and many more influential factors that ‘may be responsible for the shift in the system. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is bring- ing in great initiatives to increase food productivity, efficiency, sustainability through the transparent and resilient agri-food systems. The main objective behind these innovations is to match up with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SGD’s) and achieve the dream of making the new world with zero ‘hunger by 2030. These achievements can only be fulfilled by carrying out the transformation through these digital agricultural technologies We could possibly work towards the successful implementation of digital agriculture which in turn would help in realizing the potential opportunities and avoiding the possible threats like the “digital divide” to the global system of the agricultural market, This is only possible through the envision of vatious future use cases and scenarios that mainly focus on highlighting the different challenges to unpredictable degrees (Klerkx, L. et al., 2019). Nowadays the poverty and rural areas don't have these digital divide threats associated with them. Digitization has been widely responsible for widening the gap between different sectors and economies. This gap is related to early adopters and reluctant parties, gender, and urbanization degrees. Africa has been reported with the strongest growth in terms of internet ‘usage where the usage increased to 24.4 percent in 2018 compared to 2.1 percent in 2005. Despite all this transformation that the world is witnessing, there are some of the critical challenges that are responsible for creating the digital gap. The actual benefit from these technologies is not re- flected in the agricultural practices. Some of these key challenges include the lack of strong technological infrastructure, unaware of digital skills and e-literacy, inaccessibility to the internet, and other services along with the priorities of emerging economies, These challenging situations in the agriculture indus- try however call for the strong implementation of digital technologies into the sector (Rose, D.C. et al,Digitization in Agriculture 2018). There is a strong need of figuring out to navigate this new scenario into the agriculture market through some radical thought processes. Business leaders, policy-makers, and international organizations need to bring out something in- novative rather than the old principle of “business as usual” to devise the solution. The agri-food sector has never been challenged like this when the whole world that is led by the youth population is moving towards globalization and dynamic digitalization to bring up the massive technology and innovations. It's still a challenge to introduce digitalization into the agrifood sector. We need to carry out certain transformations in various fields. Changes in the system of agriculture, rural economies, and commu- nities along with the management of natural resources may prove to be suitable strategies to bring the (ransformation to achieve its full potential Dive Into the Definition Modern agriculture has recently experienced efficiency, yield, and much more profits through these technological transformations which were not attainable in previous times (Weltzien, C., 2016). The establishment of the very first civilization and societies was made possible through the first revolution in the agricultural sector (ca, 10000 BC) which enabled humanity to settle, The revolutions between 1900 and 1930 introduced mechanization and other changes in the food sector. Further revolutions like the Green Revolution of the 1960s brought up new varieties of the crop which were more resistant than before along with the encouragement on the use of agrochemicals to increase the farm productivity levels. Between the years 1990 to 2005, there was the introduction of the new technologies to modify the genetics of the farming of the crop. With the help of the digital agricultural revolution, the survival of humanity is possible along with its possibility to continue in the future, Industry 4.0 opens up the availability of computational technologies that are more data-intensive Figure 2. Digital Agriculture Ecosystem DicrTAL AGRICULTURE EcosTsTEMDigitization in Agriculture and highly interconnected, capable of offering new opportunities in the field of digital agriculture, as shown in Figute. 2. Digitalization in simple terms is the process of leveraging the digital technologies that work on digi- tized data to automate the various business processes and operations (Shepherd, M. et al., 2018). For example, uploading the digital documents to the cloud for making it accessible to anytime anywhere Another example is to use Google sheets to work on a collaborative platform which avoids the tedious tasks sharing an excel file to some other person when required, Generating reports in clicks through Business Intelligence tools can be thought of as another example of digitalization, ‘The last term is Digital Transformation (Boulahya, R. et al., 2020) which is the process of using digital technologies to improve processes, productivity, and customer experiences. It can be thought of developing a mindset to achieve the customer-driven strategic business rather than implementing sepa- rately as the projects. It tends to automate the manual business processes and provides agility, customer focus, and dataedriven decisions into the sector which it transforms. Rise of Digital Agriculture If we compare the digital transformation in different industries then agrifood business is the most trans- formative and disruptive among all of them. This transformation will not only change the conventional old-age farming methods along with the behaviors of farmers but will also make an impact on every part associated with the sector value chain, We may also see the significant changes in the processing of, marketing, pricing, and selling of the products by input providers along with retail and processing companies. What the digitalization in the agricultural sector brings is the change in the management of resources which would be very much optimized. All this digital infrastructure in real-time would be much ‘more individualized and intelligently made possible through the interconnection of the subcomponents within the sector and the huge dependence on the data available (Yang, S. et al., 2002). Management prescriptions for each of the agrifood fields and crops along with the value chains should be optimized to a good level along and on an individual basis instead of treating them on a uniform ground, Also, it should be taken care that all the animals are monitored and managed individually. At the lowest level of granularity, we can expect some amount of traceability and coordination in the value chains of the agrifood sector. Systems which are safe and anticipatory along with the good adaptation to the changes in climatic condition have good levels of productivity. These types of systems should ideally be the output of the transformation that the digitalization would bring in the agricultural sector. The increased amount in food security, profit levels, and sustainability can be some of the expec- tations from these advanced systems, Over the next decade, the agriculture industry and the food sector will definitely transform through the rise of digital technologies according to some market predictions and forecasts. Different technologies will have their role and impact in transforming the different parts involved in the value chain of the agri-food business ‘Two key factors generally decide how the integration of these technologies should be managed within the individual part of the agrifood value chain. The first one is the complexity of that individual part and the second one is the stage of the maturity of that particular part of the chain in which the technology will fit into, Digital technologies can be classified as per the below structure which is based on the com- plexity of that individual technology and the stage of the maturity of that particular part of the agri-food chain in which the technology will fit into. Digitization tools and technologies, according to a research study, can result in much higher levels of yield productivity along with increased revenue generationDigitization in Agriculture Itis predicted that by 2030, these transformations may contribute a total of 14 percent in the growth of the Indian GDP numbers whose value would be equivalent to US dollar 15 trillion at the current rate (Vial, G., 2019). The agriculture industry is 2 USS 7.8 trillion industry today and technology has played a vital role in transforming this sector likewise it has impacted other industries. Agrifood business on its own has a 40 percent share in the global level employment responsible for feeding the world Therefore, there is anced to address some of the challenges which are being brought up by the process of digital transformation, Some of these are inadequate levels of standardized digital solutions in the aspect of data and the problems surrounding it like incorrect format settings. The properties of the data are unclear along with its usage and access control activities. Digital transformation in agriculture is be~ ing used by big international companies in this disparate scenario to carry out the business in agrifood. Solving the social challenges and issues revolving around transforming rural living, unemployment problems ate affecting organizations like government and public sector agencies which are an integral part of this process. These disruptive technologies may have an impact on the environment of the social and economic areas which generates the big challenge of making wise use of these technologies and able to take a good advantage. Reason Behind the Need of Digital Revolution in Agriculture We may expect the increase of the world population with a margin of 40 percent by the year 2050 be- coming a huge number of 9. 6 billion. With this increasing number in the global population, there will be a need for increased production in food by 70% to fulfill the requirements as predicted by FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization). The requirements of cereals and livestock would increase by 1 billion tons and 200 million tons re- spectively per year while utilizing the same or just 5 percent more agricultural Iand (Krishnan, A. et al., 2020). To meet this requirement on a sustainable level, we need to take care of the environmental and regulatory challenges posed by the global agricultural industry. There is a need to achieve these goals by increasing the farm yields as the majority of farmland is already being farmed. The solution to this problem of feeding the world is possible through the support of digital transformational technologies in the field of agriculture What one can achieve from this digitalization in the agricultural field is the efficiency, production, and profit levels which were not anyhow possible through the traditional farming systems. All the journey started from mechanization (1900 to 1930), moving to the green revolution (1960) which brought up the development of crop varieties which are more new and resistant along with the usage of agro-chemicals followed by genetic modification (1990 to 2005). Among all the industries, digitalization has the highest impact in the agrifood business, changing every single part of the agri-food value chain. The correction in the nutrition of the soil along with the management of pests and disease has been on track with the help of technological advancements in the field of agriculture Moreover with the genetic development and innovation cycle shortening of the crops made us achieve higher crop yields. There are plenty of climatic changes that the farmers are facing despite the increased demand for food production, Some of these factors are fluctuations in rainfall patterns, extreme weather conditions, water scarcity, and increased temperature levels which ate the hindrance tothe optimum yields (Wang, ILH. ct al., 2014), There is a strong need for innovation and improvements in farm productivityDigitization in Agriculture to meet this demand. All these challenges can be overcome by leveraging the digital technologies which will facilitate the farmers with the information and contribute to farm productions, ‘Along with the farmers, consumers are also very vigilant these days about the products they are con- suming and want high-quality products along with every single information associated with products from the farms to their doorsteps. All this level of traceability can be achieved by the digital technologies that can satisfy the consumers and eventually the farm value, Modern agriculture needs innovation more than what was needed in old times. There are a lot of challenges which the agri-food industry is facing right now to ensure the transparency and sustainability in the products which the consumers are consuming. Some of these challenges are the high cost of supplies, labor shortage, and changes in the buying preferences from the consumers. Agricultural corporations are setting up the demand for the solutions that are required to solve these challenges in the sector. As a result, there has been a massive growth in agricultural technology with an investment of $6.7 billion in the last $ years and $1.9 billion in the last year; all within 10 years. Artificial intelligence, indoor vertical farming, modern greenhouse technologies, precision farming, blockchain are some of the key technologies which have been touched to revolutionize the agricultural sector (Llewellyn, D., 2018). With the digital transformation, we can have a world where farming would be considered a high-tech profession and bring a positive impact on the management of natural resources. This can lead to the elimination of food wastage and fulfil the increasing demand for food production, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) (Kaur, G. et al., 2018), all other digital technologies are changing the way of farming and thus is impacting every part of its value chain. SURVEY Digitization and Agtech Transforming Agriculture With the advent of digital technologies around the globe, the world now has been a lot closer than what it used to look a decade ago. Mobile devices which are the principal component behind the revolution are becoming day by day a lot cheaper, faster, efficient, and smaller than they ever had, With many in- dustries trying to make full use of the emergence of these digital (ools, farmers tend to be no exception (Carolan, M., 2020). These next-generation advances in technology are helping farmers by providing better control over the day to day operations, ultimately enabling them to get a better hold of the number of resources they put into use on a daily basis. As a result, the concept of digital technology is currently finding a myriad set of applications in different agriculture practices that includes agriculture processes like livestock handling, to farm machinery. With the onset of digitalization, the concept of smart farming is expected to rise by double in the coming 5 years, The continuously incteasing demand for food for the world has put stress on the wide- spread adoption of the innovative practices that can leverage the downtrodden old age Agri industry. Some of these systems like the one using the GPS system in seeding alongside harvesting machinery with advanced digital monitoring tools have to broaden the farmer’s perspective in terms of the yield. Similarly in horticulture, there has been digital technology that provides an unimaginable level of man- agement precision that includes efficient use of water, effective control of disease, and optimization of the overall yield (Rotz, S. et al., 2019)Digitization in Agriculture The electronic animal identification with remote sensing capability along with automated weighing and drafting is one another example of the use of the digital technologies that exemplify the growth rate, feed conversion ratios altogether with livestock uniformity and quantity. In spite of the development of all such technologies, only a few of them have proved to find their place in the mainstream. AgTech in India With the rise in the population around the world, there has been a great surge in the demand for sustain- able food, impacting global demand & security. India being an agrarian economy depends mainly on the good rainfall and human labour for its growth. While most of the developed countries around the ‘world developed the modern tech enabling tools & machines, farmers in India still have to plod their farmlands with obsolete farming practices. Unfortunately, they are neither trained nor equipped with the latest technological advancements to make their demands met in a faster and efficient way (Deichmann, U. et al., 2016). However, with the growth of communication infrastructure in India, the concept of digital farming is entering into the con- fined space of Indian farmers to assist them better in various activities related to their yield & crop safety. Despite its intervention, this concept still lacks proper penetration into the current market, ‘The main reason behind this is the lack of adoption & proper training to the farmers with the latest cost-effective technologies for different farming practices. This is one of the main reasons why the contribution of the agriculture sector finds it difficult to contribute better to the overall GDP of the nation. Due to the same reason, the government of India has started to promote new era digital tech-based startups inthis domain through various programs. Following up on the digital India programme launched in 2015 by Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi, there has been a surge in the number of agrec- ‘ments between big software firms & the government to develop various digital technologies for farming, Such an example of such joint collaboration happened in 2019 where the NITI Aayog merged with big software firm to develop a system for yield predictions using artificial intelligence so that farmers can get to know the real-time advisories. According to a report by Cisco (Liang, Y. et al., 2003), nearly 4.6 billion people will be using the Internet by 2021, which means that the agriculture startups around the world can unleash umpteen opportunities through continuous innovation and can transform the ag- riculture landscape like never before. The main challenge that lies in front of India is optimizing growth in agriculture through effective frameworks, policies, and programs that can empower Indian farmers to enable a technology-driven ecosystem for farming. Some other challenges confronting the Indian agriculture ecosystem include declining farm productivity, unsustainable usage of resources, rapidly growing demand for high-quality & safe food, fragmented landholdings, and stagnating farm incomes (Seth, 2017). The digitalization of agricultural-based business involves leveraging massive amounts of data from agricultural tools, equipment, machines, sol, using modern-day tech to automate agriculture which plays akey role to meet the ever-increasing global demand for food. Apart from this, some of the other useful applications of digital technology in farms includes livestock & farm management, crop & soil health monitoring, geographic information system, remote sensing, etc. Al of these applications supply the ordinary farmer with essential details like crop selection, as- sistance in obtaining insurance & credit, weather-related advisories etc. Similarly, the application of advanced analytics allows the farmer to make a smart decision about their resources consumptions and other important parameters that ultimately enable them to save a lot of unnecessary investment (Mittal,Digitization in Agriculture S. et al, 2010). With over 500 startups in the agtech space in India, the agribusiness sector is greatly booming only due to the intervention of digital technologies through different stages of farming, With low cost-efficient digital technologies from these startups, India can bring a revolution in its Agri sector across pre, post, processing & logiste stages Agri-tech Startup Landscape For the adoption & development of knowledge-based agriculture education, agricultural digitization projects stood to be of paramount importance. Researchers all over the world are supporting the con- cepts of smart & precision farming through several innovations & data analytics. Therefore, it seems quite crucial to empower farmers with the latest innovative digital technologies that can ultimately drive further R&D and create a culture to understand and expedite the adoption of advanced technologies in agricultural practices. These latest digital technologies can help farmers to cope better with the calami- ties and their aftermath in a much better way than what they used to handle with the conventional tools, Despite the recent progress in the agriculture domain due to the involvement of the government there still exists a constant challenge to provide food to its continuously increasing population. With the advent of the Digital India programme in 2015 there has been a surge in the emergence of different types of agtech based startups in the country. ‘The three main of them can be classified as follows, Agriculture Market Place ‘The startups that belong to this kind of category are useful in providing services like the agricultural news, weather forecast, price alerts, and local government vegetable market in their respective language. ‘These startups also help in connecting the farmers to the ultimate seller, ultimately helping in avoiding the unnecessary need of the middle men or broker. Digital Farm Management Startups belonging to this category help in providing an overall overview of their whole operation from production to inventory management using state of the art technologies like geospatial analytics, machine learning, and data analytics. Climate Smart Precision Farming This category of the startup is responsible to provide better data driven farming decisions using on farm sensing technology that integrate with data science and artificial intelligence to make better useful pre- dictions for growth & optimisation of resources. These resources generally include cost savings in terms of energy, pesticides, water, and fertilizers to product losses prevention, automation and getting realtime alerts to make adjustments in their farming practices accordingly. Since the beginning of digital india programme (Lele, U. et al., 2017) there has been a huge adoption of mobile technologies and the internet that open a whole new wave of growth in this sector, As a result there were a number of initiatives that were launched by the indian government of india in the past.Digitization in Agriculture Some of the useful ones in this regard includes the india israel innovation bridge, that developed as a tech platform to facilitate bilateral engagement between the istaeli and indian startups, corporations, and tech hubs that aims on fostering growth in different sectors including agriculture. Another useful initiative was the ‘Agriculture Grand Challenge’ that was developed by the ministry of government under the indian government to look for new innovations and concepts in 12 different areas. It was developed mainly to provide thrust and emerging agri based startups in digital space with the necessary infrastruc- ture for further inclusion into the indian agriculture sector, Some of the main themes for the challenge include things like yield estimation, price forecasting, losses prevention, ¢-marketplace development, soil testing methods etc. Recently, the department of agriculture and food engineering at ITT Kharagpur has launched an online course on “Application of Digital Technologies in Agriculture”, that focuses on engaging smart technologies for enhancing productivity with minimal effort and cost. These wouldinclude Sensors, Drones, Robots, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Machine Vision Techniques, Computer Aided Design and Advanced Digital Technologies application in Agriculture. Knowledge about Digital Farming Solutions will help the farming community in Enhancing their productivity by Robots, Drones and AGVs. Digital Agtech Based Startups This section will highlight a few notable emerging startups in the agtech space around the world, which are using digital technologies to bring a revolution in the current dormant agriculture sector (Kimle, K. L,, 2018). 1. Fasal is an Indian based artificial intelligence powered IoT platform that monitors a number of growing conditions of the farm to provide better decisions for different farming practices. It uses AT & data science to provide an extensive overview and knowledge about the way through which farmers can optimise their yield and get control over the future harvest. 2. ‘The tech giant IBM had partnered with Yara, a global leader in digital farming solutions from nor- ‘way, to provide smart agricultural solutions for optimization of farming practices to increase yields, crop quality and incomes in a sustainable way. They put their focus on different verticals in farm optimization using machine learning, artificial intelligence and farm related data to unlock new insights for the farmers. Starting from providing hyperlocal weather forecasts alongwith real-time actionable recommendations, tailored to the specific needs of individual fields/crops, they develop blockchain-enabled network of food chain players to allow for greater traceability and supply chain efficiency as well as ways to tackle food fraud, food waste and sustainability, 3. Inability of the farmer to have a formal transaction record of how much they get through the middlemen is one of the problems that hinders their ability to get access to financial services like crop insurance, lending ete, To solve this problem, a startup named BanQu came as a rescue some years ago. Itis a blockchain-based software as a service platform that creates a decentralized digital ledger of each transaction, helping farmers build credit and hold processors accountable. Instead ‘of cash, each farmer received a digital payment through BanQu’s blockchain platform, 10Digitization in Agriculture Post COVID Scenario ‘The consequences of the raging COVID 19 have been felt all around the world. It not only affected busi- nesses but also slowed down the economy of the whole nation tremendously. It could be seen through the percentage declination of the overall GDP of the nation in the first quarter of 2020. Italy being one of the worst-hit countries suffered a GDP downside of 12.4%, while a country like India experienced a GDP drop of 23.9% in the first quarter to the same quarter in 2019 (Limilsina, B. et al., 2020), To get back on track the country must start relying on a technological based agricultural system that can bolster the dormant agriculture sector, In this period of pandemic across the world, the digitalization of agriculture could prove to be the biggest advantage for the Agro based industry. It can help in managing transportation, supply chain, finance in a much better way when there is a need to find an alternative to shuman-centric tasks. ‘They cater to various streams in the agricultural supply chain, including cooperatives, farmers, whole- salers, importers, exporters, contract farming companies, retailers, and even consumers. In simple terms, this concept or application of digital technology simplifies the management of farm operation in several ways. Right from the plantation, it takes care of the quality, storage & sales, and everything that comes in between them. That's why enterprise resource planning platform based Agri tech startups could prove to gain much more appreciation than the other ones in this segment. The digitalization is revolutionizing the agricultural landscape in the sense that now farmers are getting much more educated, aware, informed and equipped with the workings & benefits of integrating digital technologies in their agriculture tasks. With time there has been a demand for the up-gradation of the conventional applications, Thus most of the digital technologies are combining among themselves to offer a hybrid system that provides smarter data insights through farm analytics dashboards along with the power of sensors, unmanned aerial drone, robotics right down to the micro-level. Apart from this, analytics on the nutritional require~ ‘ment of the land, along with water and crop schedules are provided to the farmer for profitable farm operations (Gregorio, G. B. et al., 2020) Figure 3, Supply Chain Management in Agriculture [icrraL AcRICULTURE SERVICES ‘SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT "Digitization in Agriculture Covid-19 Boosts Digitisation of the Agriculture Industry Despite its catastrophic impact all over the world, COVID 19 has enabled the farmers of today to adopt social and digital media platforms to sell their products directly into the market. It has brought a rapid acceleration in the digitisation of businesses across the agri-sector. The increasing demand for agricul- tural food products, shift in consumer preferences to higher standards of food safety and quality, and “unavailability of laborers during COVID-19 are some of the driving factors for the market, With millions of people relying on online grocery order nowadays, there has been a significant increase in the amount of data giving the demand estimate for each product (Altieri, M. A. et al., 2020). The era of data in food production and consumption has therefore been rapidly accelerated by COVID ultimately demanding the fusion of more digital technologies based applications in real-time. DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN AGRICULTURE The global food demand is expected to rise by 50% until 2050 according to a report by the food and agricultural organization (FAO), The future of food production depends upon technological advance- ‘ment in the agriculture sector. Bringing low-cost Agtech solutions to the farmers could help them to stay competitive enough to preserve in the coming years, With the onset of growing ownership of smartphones across the whole world, a large part of our global food system will likely be digitized (Skvortcoy, E. et al., 2018). This will help farmers to get the required assistance to better save the resources in a much more sustainable way. In the coming years, the market of global digital farming is expected to grow a lot pertaining to fac- tors such as rapidly decreasing arable land, growing population with a growing need for high production of vegetables and grains, etc.Jn addition to this, the surge in the population of green farming around the world is also giving a thrust to the digital farming market. The increasing demand for quality crops has been a major factor for the adoption of digital farming by a lot of farmers to improve the production ability of their arable lands. As a result, the global farming market is expected to be valued worth 10.23 billion USD by 2025. Other major factors that result in the overall increment in the market share include increasing demand for automation & control systems, sensing devices, antennas, access points & robots. Telematics in Agriculture The services of telematics mainly include the usage of tracking devices to locate the position of the tools formanagement purposes. With the growing number of telematics-based applications in agriculture, there has been a rising demand for digital farming practices. Increasing demand for such management services is one of the main reasons why we see a growth in the digital farming market (Cambra, C. et al., 2017) Telematics can be defined as a technology that captures useful data from the farm equipment or ‘machine operation in the farm and transfers the user data to the monitoring dashboard in real-time for further actionable decision for farming after proper analysis using the big data tools. In general, it in- volves Robots and autonomous super-tractors or a fleet of combine harvesters with cameras and sensors that are connected with the digital platform, for bringing optimization in farming practices like sowing, fertilizing, and planting. 2Digitization in Agriculture Indoor Vertical Farming ‘The concept of indoor vertical farming can be explained as the process of growing farm produce stacked ‘one over the other in a closed, confined, and controlled environment, From one over the other, it means there are shelves mounted vertically in the same area, where the plants used to grow the same as the farmland (Kozai, T et al., 2019). This method has the potential to increase the yields, cut down distance traveled in the supply chain & overcome the limited availability of land, It is mainly useful in the city and urban setup where there is always a limited space. Some of them are unique in the sense that they don't need soil to grow, meaning most of them are hydroponic, where crops are grown in a nutrient-dense bowl of water. In setups for these vertical farming practices, artificial glow light is used most of the time. Apart from the merits mentioned earlier, another significant advantage of this kind of farming is the less usage of water, It usually accounts for approximately 70% less usage than conventional farms (Benke, K. ct al,, 2017). Apart from these things, the cost of labour is also reduced duc to the employment of robots to handle the process like planting, logistics, harvesting, packing, ete. Farm Automation Farm automation in general is a technology that makes farms more efficient and automates the crop or livestock production cycle. With the growing demand for automation, a large number of companies are working on innovation related to robotics to develop drones, robotic harvesters, autonomous tractors, seeding & automatic watering robots (Fdan, ¥. et al., 2009). The primary goal of farm automation tech- nology is to cover easier, mundane tasks of the farms in much more time & cost-saving ways. Livestock Farming Technology Apart from the important technologies that were discussed earlier, one of the underserviced and overlooked sectors of the agriculture domain is the conventional livestock industry. Management of livestock has been known for keeping the business of dairy farms, poultry farms, cattle ranches, and another related agribusiness alive (Banhazi, T. M, et al., 2012). It is required that in such services the manager must keep track of the financial records, ensure proper feeding & care of animals along with the supervision of the related workers. However, with technological advancement, this industry also revolutionized the agriculture sector to serve a number of essential processes and purposes. These technological ad- vancements were discovered as the new developments in the form of nutritional technologies, genetics, digital technology, and more to keep proper track and management of livestock to improve & enhance the production capacity. ‘One such example of putting into the mainstream can be seen through the putting of individual wearable sensors on cattle that can help to keep a track of their daily activity along with health-related issues. The massive amount of data collected by these sensors are often turned into meaningful, action- able insights, which help the producers to quickly look and make quick effective management decisions. Precision Agriculture With a number of emerging technologies in farms, the agriculture sector is reforming itself like never before. Precision agriculture companies are bringing innovations in the market to help farmers maxi- 13Digitization in Agriculture mize yields by taking control of the variable parameters of crop farming (Srinivasan, A., 2006). The parameters often include points like moisture levels, soil & climate conditions, pest stress, ete, Apart from this it also helps farmers by providing accurate techniques for growing & planting erops to manage cost and increase efficiency. MAIN DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN AGRICULTURAL DOMAIN In this section, a brief overview of different technologies for precision farming is covered. Field Monitoring Monitoring Crop Health One of the popularly known methods used to determine the health of crops through satelite imagery & drones is the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVD. It takes into consideration different ‘wavelengths of light falling in both visible and nonvisible, to make the required calculations, This tech- nology in simple terms allows the farmer to get an assessment of the general health of their crops along with the detection of erop variability Yield Monitoring and Forecasting With the advancement in precision agriculture technologies, there are different ways tocollect information about the yield of the farm, Some of them consist of sensors fitted on the farmer's machinery like tractors or harvesters, drones & satelite imagery. All of them help the farmer in getting important information related to yield of grains, level of moisture, fertilization & allow them to make a better decision about their harvesting plan, The vital points regarding the same can be seen in Figure 4. Figure 4. Advisory & Information Services in Agriculture icra AGRICULToRE SenvicEs [AQVISORY & INFORMATION SERVICES 4Digitization in Agriculture Crop Scouting ‘This precision agriculture technology is quite similar to the technologies discussed above. The only fea- ture that makes it quite distinct is the usage of mobile phones and tablets to collect & monitor important data about the crops like pest population, growth of unwanted plants, etc Detection of Pests, or Weeds and Diseases From many applications of precision agriculture, we have seen that drones have been making an impor- tant role in providing data related to the detection of weeds, pests, and disease. All this has been made possible due to the hyperspectral imaging camera that is fitted in it for scanning. It provides in-depth knowledge of the farm which a typical camera can not capture. Weather and Soil Quality To get to know about the quality of the crop, certain plant and ground-based sensors are employed to collect important information about water and soil. Main things that these sensors measure are the salinity levels, pH levels, texture of the soil, nutrient status, and organic matter. Reports about the weather arc usually reaching the farmers from the weather stations through their smartphones. Data Management Platforms for Farm Management ‘This kind of software isa platform that usually comes integrated with different hardware devices to help farmers to manage their crop production efficiently. The data collected from these systems are collected & compiled onto a central platform where it is processed and analyzed to help farmers make better decisions on managing & optimizing their overall farm activities & operations, as shown in Figure 6 Apart from this, it also eases the monitoring and analysis of all related activities & streamlines crop production and harvesting schedules. In short, the software gives the farmer access to environmental conditions and finances as shown in Figure 5, so that they can better manage things like record-keeping, business needs & farm production monitoring functionalities With the agglomeration of mobile phones around the world, this kind of softwares proving themselves an important & efficient service to help farmers across different locations & conditions, around the world by making them work more efficiently whilst saving money, time, and resources. The extensive set of functionalities that are provided with it also helps specialized companies in the Agri sector to cover the needs of the farmer in a much more integrated manner. Variable Rate Applications (VRA) ‘The Variable rate application is a kind of process that mainly focuses on the automated application of things like seeds, herbicides, chemicals based on data collected from sensors, maps, and other monitor ing sources. It involves the integration of different forms of technologies related to precision agriculture. 18Digitization in Agriculture Some of which are like satellite imagery, hyperspectral imaging, machinery on harvesters and tractors, etc, Cut short, it helps in optimizing the usage of fertilizers, seeds, and other relevant chemicals Figure 5. Digital Financial Services in Agriculture ‘icrraL AGRICULTURE SERVICES DIGITAL FINANCIAL SERVICES Figure 6. Market Linkages in Agriculture ‘Dicrta AGRICULTURE SERVICES MARKET LINKAGES asap ese ge mats 16Digitization in Agriculture Agro Machinery Automation Farm Robots Over the years, robots have been finding their application in many industries to automate different tasks. However, with the inception of automation in agriculture, robots have been useful in a ton of applica- tions (Yaghoubi, 5. et al, 2013). One such big use is the automation of weed management, for which ‘two companies in the united states have developed robots that make use of their cameras to identify weeds in real-time Guidance Systems Based on GPS Global Positioning System also known as the GPS, is a technology that is mainly used in the agricul- ture sector to guide automated machinery and vehicles like autonomous harvesters, drones, tractors, ete (Parasher, Y. et al., 2019), Telematics ‘This technology as described in the previous section is a crucial technology in Agri automation that helps in establishing machine-to-machine communication between the sensors & hardware which are involved in the process of automation (Parasher, Y. et al, 2018). One such example of this could be observed during the process of managing weeds on farms. So, whenever a camera fitted on a piece of machinery identifies a section of weed, it communicates the information to other related machinery that gets the location of the weed from the former and plucks it wherever it seems necessary. Precision Planting ‘The concept of precision planting which can be shown in Figure 7. describes an automated process that optimizes the planting of seeds by allowing better depth control, sced spacing, etc (Parasher, Y. et al 2019). Usually, the optimal condition for planting is provided with other precision agriculture-based technologies on which this concept works. Blockchain Blockchain in simple terms is a system where digital information is distributed without getting copied Meaning to each block of a particular set of data there will be only one owner. Therefore, blockchain holds tremendous capability in tracking down the ownership records to solve issues like supply chain inefficient, food fraud & traceability in the current food market (Kamilaris, A. et al., 2019), Its unique decentralized structure helps in establishing a range of premium products by ensuring the verifications of products & practices with transparency. Among all the tasks where this technology seems useful, it finds its need for food traceability. Due to the presence of artificial and perishable food, the whole food industry resides at a vulnerable end. Whenever a foodborne disease strikes the public health (Singh, P. et al, 2019), it becomes quite necessary to track down the source of the whole crisis 7Digitization in Agriculture Figure 7. Macro Agriculture Intelligence ‘Dirt AGRICULTURE Senvices (MACRO AGRICULTURE berexutcence pom se i i teed ha ett ets A (cost tie a agg a as) SSS However, huge dependability on paperwork for tracking things is a major time-consuming task. In such a case, blockchain comes as a rescue, Its structure ensures that each party along the supply chain generates and shares securely the information points to form an accountable & traceable system, Such a vast number of points with labels clarifying ownership can be recorded easily with any chance of alteration, As a result, the whole journey of the food item is available to monitor in real-time (Lin, Y. P. et al,, 2017). By helping in the quick food tracking mechanism, the blockchain technology adds value to the cur- rent agri market by building a ledger in the network and balancing the pricing of the market. The price for buying & selling the farm produce depends on the judgments of the individual players involved in the market. It also enables verified transactions securely shared with every player in the supply chain of the farm produce, creating an ecosystem with immense transparency. Artificial Intelligence With the rise of new digital technologies inthe agriculture domain, there has been unprecedented growth in the amount of data that is being collected by remote sensors, satellites, UAVs, etc for different purposes (Patricio, D. I et al., 2018). These different purposes mainly include processes like monitoring of soil condition, plant health, humidity, temperature, etc. The vast data that is being collected could only serve fruitfully when the farmer is able to gain a better understanding of various things involved with the farm. Therefore to make sense out oft, this data is operated under various artificial intelligence algorithms (Parasher, ¥. et al., 2020) through which farmers can acquire a proper understanding of various pro- cesses in general. It is expected that by 2050 the world will need to produce 50% more food than what is producing right now. In such a situation, AT-enabled technologies can help farmers by providing greater yield using the available resource more sustainably. 18Digitization in Agriculture Al Applications in Agriculture and Farming Autonomous Tractors With huge investment in the development of autonomous vehicles in the last few years, the agriculture sector is going to foresee a tremendous surge in the number of driverless tractors, harvesters & other machinery (Baton, R. ef al., 2008), These self-driving or driverless tractors are programmed with dif- ferent AI algorithms to perform various tasks in general. Some of them include things like detecting ploughing positions into the fields, etc. Agricultural Robotics Similarly, AL companies are developing robots that can casily perform multiple tasks in the farming field, Most AI companies in today’s world are developing robots that can automate a set of tasks for a number of different farming practices. Some of these tasks mainly include things like crop quality checking, detection of unwanted plants, etc Pest infestations Control Pests such as grasshoppers, locusts are usually considered as the worst enemies of the farmers, They damage the crops globally before it is harvested and stored for human consumption. To cope with few Al companies have developed a system that helps farmers though alert on the smartphones, telling about the likelihood of these pests towards certain farmland or crop fields, These companies are using the satelite images of the present and past few years of the same area as the data for the AI algorithms to provide useful information Crops & Soil Health Monitoring Rapid deforestation & degradation of soil quality has been a problem for several years, To cope with it, a Germany based tech startup had recently developed a deep learning-based image recognition technol- ‘ogy application that can help in identifying the nutrient deficiencies and potential defects in soil along with the presence of pests and plant diseases (Iha, K. et al., 2019), if any. Similarly, another machine Iearning-based company named Trace Genomic provides soil analysis services to farmers so that the farmer can cope with it accordingly. Advantage of Implementing Al in Agriculture In the agriculture sector, AI plays a lot of different essential roles in doing the controlled & efficient farming practices through a set of instructions related to water management, timely & optimum harvest- ing, pest attacks, nutrient management, and crop rotation. They also help in the evaluation of farms for the presence of pests or plant disease along with poor plant nutrition, analysis of crop sustainability, and prediction of weather conditions. Apart from this, AI also helps farmers to bring automation to their farm- ing equipment or machinery to achieve a higher yield of the crop with better quality (Smith, M. J, 2020) Icenables the farmers to understand important data insights for their farms which include parameters like precipitation, temperature, wind speed, & solar radiation. The usage of AI in the agriculture sector helps modern-day farmers in many ways. It helps them to understand the data points like wind speed, 19Digitization in Agriculture precipitation, temperature, and solar radiation. To get a better outcome, the historic value of all these data points are usually considered for the analysis through the AI algorithms. AI altogether provides an efficient way to plant, produce, harvest, and sell the crops into the market. © Helps in checking the defective crops # Strengthen agro-based businesses # Improve crop management activities © Deal effectively with problems like the infestation of weeds & pests, climatic variations, etc. CHALLENGES Over the years cooperatives have always been considering the integration of digital technologies into their working farming model to meet the expectations of the stakeholders. In order to capture this op- portunity the technological innovations, business, and regulatory challenges need to be well managed Despite the growth of technological advancement, the key challenge always lies in the proper physical implementation in the mainstream. Apart from this, another main problem is the need for appropriate working methods to manage different human challenges within the teams and governance (Tzounis, Acet al., 2017). Another factor of concer is data ownership laws & regulations. However, it doesn’t prove itself to be a barrier to continued progress. With tons of agtech startups striving hard to combine intelligence with automation to improve agricultural production decisions, there are always a series of main challenges that every single one of them faces on a regular basis. The four key challenges that are faced by each and every startup in this sector are listed as follows, Connectivity One of the main challenges affecting the backbone of the digital technologies adoption across the nation is access to the internet to every place in the country. Because without the internet the idea of developing a hybrid Digitech based agricultural system would only be a dream. The need of the hour is therefore to launch low-cost internet solutions that can help the farmers to feel the impact of digitization on their produce. One such program in this regard was the ITT Bombay's project ‘Gram Marg Solution for Rural Broadband’ under the leadership of Prof, Abhay Karandikat. The team created an ingenious and “indigenous” technology that utilizes unused white space on the TV spectrum to backhaul data from village wifi clusters to provide broadband access. The main USP of the project was that affordability in setting up the required infrastructure. So far, the solution has been rolled out in 25 villages on a pilot basis. Interoperability Another main issue after connectivity is the limited interoperability of various agtech based systems & applications. This challenge mainly calls for the adoption of hybrid systems that can work in syne with each other to provide a multitude of applications instead of the proprietary one which was used to put into use for a long time. These hybrid systems can reduce the risk of inadequate support services and ‘unsupported systems and can help farmers achieve a lot of benefits out of limited investment 20Digitization in Agriculture Portability ‘Working with multiple enterprises often gives rise to the challenge of data portability. 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