Different factors expected to contribute to continued success
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
A new report suggests that within four years, the precision agriculture industry could be worth nearly $5 billion.
The report, Precision Farming Market by Technology, was completed by marketsandmarkets.com. It valued the precision agriculture industry in 2015 at approximately $2.76 billion and estimates the industry will grow by 11.7 per cent between 2015 and 2020.
The obvious question is, could the precision agriculture industry be worth nearly $5 billion by 2020?
“I would say yes,” said Paul Raymer, Co-owner of Practical Precision and one of many featured speakers at the upcoming Precision Agriculture Conference. “This precision ag environment is not going away. It’s moving with the whole technology movement globally. Precision ag would be left behind if not a leader of the pack.”
The report suggests that the emergence of the Asian-Pacific market, software application and GPS systems will be contributing factors to the precision ag market’s rise in value.
“It’s going to be an exciting frontier where this industry is going to lead to,” Raymer said.
Raymer said farmers may start looking for more information within their own fields and alluded to investments into special placement of fertilizer, water management solutions, the relationship between water and soil, and crop genetics as important information for farmers going forward.
Raymer, who recently returned from a smart technologies workshop in the United Kingdom, said some innovations in precision agriculture are already underway with an emphasis on autonomy in the dairy industry.
“Robotic milking is becoming a mature component of the dairy industry,” Raymer said. “What I learned last week is going the next step and learning more about cattle. They’re doing testing on a fitbit device for cows to see how well they perform in different environments.”
Comment below and tell us where you think the precision agriculture industry is going. What innovations are you most looking forward to?