Agriculture meets technology

The rising scale of global population growth, especially in developing countries, goes hand in hand with an inexorable increase in global demand for agricultural products. Limited availability of new productive land, climate change, and stricter regulations serve to ratchet up the pressure on efficiency and effectiveness in the agricultural sector even more. One of the main responses to these challenges comes in the form of precision farming, modern technologies that enable more efficient management of agricultural land.

The rising scale of global population growth, especially in developing countries, goes hand in hand with an inexorable increase in global demand for agricultural products. Limited availability of new productive land, climate change, and stricter regulations serve to ratchet up the pressure on efficiency and effectiveness in the agricultural sector even more. One of the main responses to these challenges comes in the form of precision farming, modern technologies that enable more efficient management of agricultural land.

In 2014, the market for precision farming—including hardware and software—was already worth 2.3 billion euros. Between now and 2020, we can anticipate a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12%, making precision farming just as much a source of future revenue as increased future farming yields. Our study into the business opportunities of precision farming takes an in-depth look at the global market, how technology will develop between now and 2030, and presents five innovative business opportunities along the agricultural value chain: integrator roles, private investment and commodity trading, and service providing for machine or seed related activities or business intelligence.

• Markets players will have to act fast, however, to reach a superior position in 21st century agriculture. In 2014, investors—including disruptive big data players such as Google—invested a total of $2.4 billion in agricultural technology start-ups. Precision farming brings together automation technology, sensors for geo-mapping, and big data analysis that can improve the evaluation of climate and soil data and increase the level of agricultural efficiency. "All of these application areas are going to experience dramatic growth in the coming years and, as such, will attract a new breed of participants into the agriculture business, such as players from the IT and investor sector. If companies want to be fit for the future, they are going to have to adjust their current business models to what is happening in the market to enable them to profit from the enormous future potential offered by this industry,” explains Norbert Dressler, Partner at Roland Berger. In other words, there’s still a right to play, but without decisive action and the relevant strategic control points, big data may very well feed the world of tomorrow.