changing the technology landscape

Precision agriculture precision agriculture has the potential to improve productivity and generate environmental and health benefits. precision agriculture technology effectively combines data-intensive analytics with data-guided farming equipment (box 5.1), generating environmental benefits such as water savings and reduced nutrient runoff and pesticide use (Mondal and Basu 2009). Benefits to farmers include savings in labor and input costs (seed, fertilizer, pesticides, water), optimized timing of crop management practices, ability to give insight into crop variability over large acreage, and reduced exposure to pesticides.

The future of farming: Artificial intelligence and precision agriculture are fast changing the technology landscape

Machines called “agribots,” from a variety of companies, are appearing in the agricultural fields in many shapes and sizes. The development of agribots is driven by artificial intelligence. These electrically powered devices can do a variety of agricultural tasks, such as monitoring of crops (nutrient status and presence of weeds, pathogens, or pests), weeding (electrocution), spraying and micro-dosing nutrients or pesticides, hoeing, and harvesting. Self-contained agribots will have to compete with systems towed by smart tractors. Most modern tractors and combine harvesters can steer themselves across fields using satellite positioning and other sensors. Some tractors use digital maps of crops obtained by satellites and drones to highlight the places that require fertilizer or pesticides (Economist 2020).

Asia’s wealthier nations are advancing the Internet of Things (IoT) and automation in field monitoring and precision agriculture. In 2016, Japan opened the world’s first robot farm. The Singaporean firm Garuda Robotics is providing drones to Southeast Asian farmers. In the Republic of Korea, the government began testing a “smart farm village” in Sejong City in 2015, providing farmers with a suite of smart agriculture tools including remote sensing and automated controls, all connected to smartphones, resulting in a 23 percent increase in efficiency. Malaysia is also making great strides—the government included agriculture as part of the national 2015 IoT plan, incorporating a pilot project that applied the IoT to aquaculture traceability. Malaysia’s information and communication technology research and development center is also conducting trials of sensor technology to help plan the timing of oil palm pollination (Green 2018).

China is also experimenting with precision farming. The modern agriculture project in Hubei province uses the BeiDou navigation Satellite System, which combines high-precision positioning technology with sensor technology to realize accurate monitoring of soil moisture, farm machinery autopilot control, and direct seed precision planting. Another example is the intelligent rice bud production system in Heilongjiang province, which conducts real-time data collection through temperature and moisture sensors in greenhouses to achieve intelligent micro-spraying and electric shutter ventilation control (ADB 2018). precision technology and field-monitoring tools must be adapted to smallholder contexts to have an impact. Most field-level precision agriculture innovations are not about agribots or automation but about less advanced and less costly applications. The most appropriate tools for smallholders are often singular, low-cost tools, such as chlorophyll meters, although smallholders involved in cooperatives can make use of larger precision agriculture packages (Giovannucci et al. 2012; Ortolani and Bella 2015; Teng 2017). Other notable low-tech innovations in the region include kits for digital soil testing, smallholder algae production (Feed the Future 2017), and solar-powered irrigation (Arizona State university 2017). The philippines has been using unmanned drones equipped with navigation and photographic technology to identify land vulnerable to natural disasters, and the country’s space satellite program included the launch of Diwata-1,

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Box 5.1, continued

designed to provide forecasts and weather monitoring and to survey farmland. Thailand’s Mahidol university has also used drones for monitoring crops using multispectral, hyperspectral, thermal, and lIDAR (light detection and ranging) imaging (Green 2018).

Many precision innovations require little capital and can be developed by start-ups and entrepreneurs. Ag-tech communities in Asia are developing a number of tools, satellites, drones, weather-tracking tools, and remote sensors. Regional examples include the following:

• Vietnam-based MimosaTEK has developed a cloud-based system that allows farmers to control and manage their farms using sensors. It produces alerts in response to challenges and can execute remote irrigation by mobile phone. • HelloTractor has developed a two-wheel smart tractor with a global positioning system antenna, allowing smallholders to request and pay for tractor services through text messages on a justin-time basis. Farmers have seen yield increases of as much as 200 percent since its launch in 2014. HelloTractor is prominent in Africa, and has been introduced in India, pakistan, and Thailand since 2019 (HelloTractor 2019). • Indonesia-based eFishery developed a smart fish feeder that automatically dispenses feed when fish are hungry. In a region with high fish consumption, and with feed representing 80 percent of production costs, innovations such as this (reducing feed costs by 20 percent) could have profound benefits (Green 2018).

The transition to greater use of precision agriculture among smallholders requires attention to structural issues (for example, land rights and lot size), infrastructure, and affordability (Green 2018). East Asian countries are at different stages of development or of adoption of precision agriculture. Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore are in the lead and adopting sophisticated and automated farming, such as agribots that manage most field work, while China, Malaysia, and Thailand follow at some distance. The challenge for developing East Asia will be to adapt precision agriculture technologies to the region’s agroecological and small-farm realities, where cost, ICT connectivity, and skills also play a role (box 5.1).

E-extension and other e-services Mobile-based extension and other e-services have increased smallholders’ productivity and resilience to climate risks.3 ICT applications in agricultural extension, weather and price information, banking, and to some extent insurance4 have been successfully promoted in several regions since about 2005 (World Bank 2012, 2017a). Increasing access to mobile phones has enabled delivery of timely and customized information at scale, contributing to timely farming and market decisions and yield increases.5 Improved access to timely information is particularly important in East Asia, where small farms operate a significant share of farmland—about 70–80 percent of farms are smaller than two hectares (Cassou, Jaffee, and Ru 2017).

Most developing East Asian countries have tried to optimize the outreach and coverage of extension with diverse mobile-based applications. Most e-extension services are subnational, nimble, and managed by nonpublic actors, such as the Vinaphone-managed ‘’farm assistant’’ program in Vietnam (box 5.2). China has, however, attempted to streamline e-extension as part of its broader public sector