The Challenge of Feeding The World: How Agricultural Technology is Helping?

The world’s population is growing significantly every day, and massive climate changes adversely affect the agricultural growth of foods. Grappling with these impacts create a rise in food insecurity, with food systems failing to meet the needs of everyone. So the questions stand: How do we feed the world with such obstacles in the way of agricultural farming? How can we prepare to provide for so many people as the population continues to grow so quickly?

Despite some failing standard farming and agricultural methods, there are plenty of reasons we can be optimistic about the future of foods. First, emerging technologies are developing and creating opportunities that will transform food and agricultural systems, making more genuinely safe, organic foods. 

New Farming Opportunities

Some key factors that we can take to start embracing and utilizing these new methods include understanding the challenges and questions that are rising to implement innovations and finding these new innovations that will promote long-term sustainability within the environment. Researching and gaining insight regarding systems will help us analyze how we can access and apply them. In addition, we should learn more about the agricultural developments, machinery, and equipment that can help promote faster production.

Innovative technology is and will continue to be a vital component of the world’s ability to helping feed the world. Some professionals and experts are creating and implementing new machinery, and farmers have always been quick to take on recent advances that help promote more efficient productivity.

What are these New Technologies?

Some of the agricultural advancements that have developed and will continue to grow are as follows:

• Vertical Farming – Vertical farming is the agricultural process in which the foods are grown on top of each other instead of rows. Growing crops in this fashion not only provides conservation of more space, but it also allows for food to be grown indoors in a more controlled climate and environment, so it is not susceptible to harsh climates. As a result, vertical farming is quickly gaining popularity as the future of farming technology.
• Advanced Sensors & Data Equipment – automated harvesting systems can quickly and accurately analyze crops’ health and variations. This gives farmers excellent insights into the best time to harvest different types of crops and provides more maximized harvesting methods.
• Surveillance Tools – sensors and cameras are being relied on heavily to monitor plants through their growth journey. They watch the crops grow and keep track of farming conditions like temperature, light, nutrient levels, and humidity. This technology helps farmers understand what conditions are best for each specific plant since they all prefer different climates and help them develop the best foods.

How To Incorporate These Technologies

Governments need to lead the efforts in the delivery and deployment of these advanced technologies. All of these various food innovations can help tackle the world’s challenges, improve health, nutrition, and environmental sustainability, and promote more economic growth.  The governments play a prominent role in providing funds, infrastructure, and other logistics to regulate these changes. In addition, food systems need upgrades and (possibly) energy systems to support their development. When facing such adversities as climate change and deterioration of health from not eating seasonal, healthy foods, there are many benefits to investing in these farming technologies for our future.

With these innovations already available, now is the time to drive the direction of change. Producing more food on the same amount of land with the added advantage of minimizing environmental impact is farmers’ biggest obstacle. 

The Need For Agricultural Change

Food systems are complex, but with production growth and sustainability efforts, farmers can produce more crops in shorter periods. A study performed by Reuters showed that investment in agricultural technology startups grew from just over $2 billion to over $4 billion in one year. There are so many advantages to embracing these new innovations, such as the vertical and indoor farming techniques, which provide:

• No effects from adverse weather: Indoor and vertical farming allow crops to grow in a full-enclosed, climate-controlled environment, so there is no need for farmers to rely on the weather to grow and multiply.
• Reduce water usage: The hydroponic growing process uses such a minimal amount of water. As a result, the water will not become contaminated with any harmful pesticides to be recycled and reused, saving costs and eliminating waste.
• Environmental sustainability: There is a significant reduction in the usage of fossil fuels that farming equipment typically uses with indoor farms since the crops do not need fertilization, weeding, or harvesting. There is also no land takeover for cropping so that natural animal populations can thrive without disturbance.
• Energy efficiency: vertical farms generate power, and renewable technologies can take that energy and allow it for reuse elsewhere.

Other benefits include that there will be a massive reduction in costs of labor since there is not a significant need for manual work in yearly production. It also has the added advantage of being safer since no heavy machinery or chemicals are being used.

As agricultural technology evolves and becomes more adaptive, there will be a better sense of reliability and sustainability that stems from their use. The challenge of feeding the world can and will be addressed by farmers worldwide as long as they continue to gain knowledge and use these innovations to address the need for a more intelligent, safer food supply and bring their production to food suppliers and retailers for consumption.