Myth 1 “Digital Agriculture is Digital Farming”
Blog: Capgemini CTO Blog
There is as much truth in calling, “Digital Agriculture is Digital Farming” as much as the world-wide-web being Spiderman’s homepage! We opened the Agri blog series with a call to technologists, highlighting the challenges faced by the agrarian community. While agricultural holdings year on year are decreasing rapidly, and fewer millennials consider Farming an attractive occupation, the question in front of us today is – How do we secure and improve the livelihood of those who still take the responsibility to feed the rest of the world? The unusual combination of digital and agriculture has led to several misunderstandings. It’s time now to debunk these misunderstandings – one myth at a time.
There is still a long way to go from Digital Farming, which is farm centric, to actual digital agriculture. Digital farming is about making farming more efficient. Agricultural giants, governments, and IT behemoths such as John Deere, Monsanto, Bayer, SAP and IBM all launched their digital initiatives for agriculture. SAP, for example, is creating a connected Agriculture platform based on the SAP Cloud platform. It will act as an App and API marketplace where SAP and their partners develop collaborative solutions for the Agri-industry. Farmers can pick the most fitting apps and offering for their activities.
Smart farm equipment, drones, and robots are enabling precision agriculture. Big data and algorithms in agriculture will enable insights and optimization in the field. Most of the initiatives are farm-centric. However, digital farming is just the first step of a long and complex digital food chain in the making. Food logistics, processors, retailers, and consumers can all benefit from this digital shift. The challenge is not only implementing data enabled processes and technologies in the fields. It is also about collaboration between the millions of stakeholders involved in the food chain.
To learn more about the SmartAgriFood project and how Capgemini is leveraging the SAP Cloud Platform and SAP Leonardo, please reach out to me Jacko Obels.
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