Digital Farming Market Trends

Growth Drivers

• Rapidly Escalating Hunger Rate Across the Globe - Significantly increasing population, and rising income ratio in developed countries are immensely pushing up worldwide demand for food, which is surging the hunger ratio on a larger scale. Therefore, farmers are in dire need of increasing yield production by adopting innovative methods such as digital farming. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in 2020, the global hunger rate affected between 720 to 811 million people.
• Spike in Intense Water Scarcity – For instance, approximately two-thirds of the world's population faces intense water scarcity within a month. Furthermore, by 2030, nearly 690 million people are expected to be relocated as a result of severe water scarcity.
• Upsurge in Smart Farming Through Technology Integration - The deployment of IoT devices in agricultural production surpassed around 78 million by the end of 2020, expanding at the rate of nearly 22% per year.
• Globally Increasing Food Demand – For instance, it is estimated that to feed the world's 9 billion people in 2050, the world’s total food production needs to boost by 72% between 2007 to 2050.
• Massively Increasing Worldwide Population – As per the World Bank, the world’s total population has touched the figure of 7.84 billion by 2021.

Challenges

• High Cost of Digital Farming Solutions - The price of producing cotton is already rising. In 2018, China's cotton production costs were 3.4 times higher compared to those in the US and 4.3 times higher than that of India. The cost of labor, something that accounts for 55.9% of the total cost of producing cotton and is increasing at an average annual growth rate of 7.9%, was the highest among these costs, followed by service fees and the price of agricultural inputs besides chemical fertilizer and pesticides, that together accounted for 31.2% of the total cost.
• Lack of Awareness Regarding Digital Farming
• High Primary Investment in Digital Farming