Agriculture Analytics Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The agriculture analytics market is projected to grow at 14.4% CAGR during the forecast period of 2021 - 2026. Agriculture analytics is the application of cutting-edge technologies like Big Data, IoT, and other analytics tools in agricultural farming. The primary growth factor for the agriculture analytics market is increasing government initiatives for deploying improved agricultural techniques. Data volumes in the agriculture sector are growing exponentially. The increasing adoption of IoT devices that collect data from connected farm equipment such as smart tractors and drones is also driving the growth of agriculture analytics. Crop growers and agribusiness players are recognizing the potential for uncovering breakthroughs on plant genomics, livestock management, soil health, and faster development of new technologies in big data and other analytics methods.

Key Highlights

• Agriculture is the foundation of economies worldwide. Factors such as population growth, food security concerns, and climate change have propelled the industry into seeking more innovative approaches to protect and improve crop yield.
• Climate change is likely to impact agricultural production significantly. A global agricultural zone expected to be affected by such issues is Brazil's, Mato Grosso. Similarly, the Midwestern United States and eastern Australia will witness a decrease in agricultural production owing to extreme heat. These severe weather conditions are expected to stimulate the deployment of connected agriculture solutions in agriculture to increase yield and enhance efficiency.
• The United Nations forecasts that the world's population count will reach approximately 9.7 billion by 2050, a 33% increase in mouths to feed. Farmers are looking to established industry leaders and start-ups to help develop solutions to increase productivity and increase connectivity between growers and their crops.
• With the increasing use of Big Data in farming to get insights for better crop yield results, it is boosting the growth of agriculture analytics in the coming years. For example, a Brazilian company called AgroTools is using Google Cloud platform and assessing massive databases of satellite images to monitor properties spread across an area of farming land, which is as large as Denmark, Italy and France combined. The company carries out more than 200,000 analyses annually on more than 1,100 layers of information. Owing to advancements such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and drones gadgets leading to the collection of information, the company handles the total volume of data approximately 1,600 petabytes over the years.
• Major technology providers like IBM are also boosting the growth of the agriculture analytics market by helping farming analytics start-ups with bare metal servers in IBM Cloud data centers. For example, SmartRural, a Europe-based start-up has built a location intelligence platform through IBM Cloud. The platform used to combine its customer’s data with its thermal, RGB drone, and multi-spectral images of fields and data from remote sensors embedded in the soil. By enriching this data, the company can identify if field water is being wasted in certain farming areas, determine the soil fertility, health of the crops, and finding areas of insect or frost damage.
• At the present COVID-19 crisis scenario, the agricultural industry across the globe has experienced significant disruptions. Scrutiny in agricultural production has steadily increased owing to food safety recalls customer demand and sustainability efforts. As stated by the Global Food Traceability Center (GFTC), the requirement of traceability of agricultural products has increased steadily due to the pandemic. This will help drive the deployment of advanced data-driven tools such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other advanced data analytics tools to help stakeholders across the supply chain.
• Players present in the market are also helping crop growers by providing smart tools to offset COVID-19 related loss. For instance, in April 2020, Locus Agricultural Solutions had announced that the company would donate its climate-smart technology to crop growers to promote regenerative agriculture practices.

Key Market Trends

Farm Analytics is Expected to Grow at a Significant Rate Over the Forecast Period

• Agriculture researchers are using artificial intelligence and data science to make on-farm predictive analytics before delivering the insights that matter in the farming land. The rising subscription-based service model aims to cut down the cost for farmers and provide them real-time alerts about crop conditions. Moreover, predictive models and optimization of daily tasks will give complete control over their future harvest.
• Companies like Ag-Analytics access insights from precision agriculture data to address weather impacting concerns. The company uses tools like FarmScope, which combine diverse data sources like satellite, soil, weather, historical crop, and farm equipment data to create an analysis of the current state of an agricultural field and forecast for future yield.
• In February 2020, AI and Robotics Ventures, a subsidiary of PTT Exploration, is diversifying into agriculture business by developing AI and data analytics systems for local farming. The company has planned to collaborate with Thaicom for the project. These rising investments by existing vendors drive the growth of the farm analytics segment over the forecast period.
• However, the growing AI and other emerging technologies require high initial investments, efficient farming tools, and skilled and knowledgeable farmers or growers, thereby making farmers apprehensive about using farm analytics to analyze precise field data.

North America Geographic Segment is Expected to Hold a Significant Share Throughout the Forecast Period

• The primary driving force for the growth of the North America geographic segment is the significant presence of technology providers and increasing government initiatives towards smart farming. These players focus on entering into partnerships, merger-acquisitions, and innovative solutions offerings to stay in the regional and globally competitive landscape.
• For instance, in May 2019, IBM Corporation announced the global expansion of the Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture, with AI technology tailored for new crops to feed a growing population across the United States. The company is providing a global agriculture solution that combines predictive technology with data from The Weather Company, an IBM Business, and IoT data to help give farmers around the world more significant insights about planning, plowing, planting, spraying, and harvesting.
• During the last few decades, there has been a considerable shift from traditional agricultural activities to an organized one to improve agricultural activities through the application of analytics and smart devices.
• For instance, General Mills, a multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded consumer foods, is planning to advance regenerative agriculture practices on one million acres of farmland in the United States by 2030.
• There is high market penetration for emerging technology-enabled agriculture across the United States. In July 2019, the Federal Communications Commission decided to form a new task force to advise the commission on how to ensure farmers and ranchers have the connectivity they need to use and benefit from precision agriculture. This task force will work with USDA to develop policy recommendations to promote the rapid, expanded deployment of broadband internet service in unserved agricultural land, to achieve strong capabilities on 95% of agricultural land in the United States by 2025.

Competitive Landscape

The agriculture analytics market is moderately competitive and consists of a significant number of global and regional players. These players account for a considerable share in the market and focusing on expanding their customer base across the globe. These vendors are focusing on the research and development activities, strategic partnerships, and other organic & inorganic growth strategies to earn a competitive edge throughout the forecast period.

• In April 2020, Ag-Analytics announced the release of fully remote, on-demand UAV service to assist crop growers by providing cost-effective UAV flights and machine learning analytics. With the help of this service, farmers can easily place a no-obligation order in less time when the fly-out occurs in 3-5 days. The process is done entirely remotely, which does not require any physical contact.
• In March 2020, Growers Holdings, Inc., a software and analytics company, is entering into a strategic partnership with SAS Institute to help farmers with data-driven insights, making better agronomic decisions across their entire agriculture ecosystem. With the help of this partnership, the alliance will have the opportunity to address the global food crisis in the coming years.

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