“Area R – Sector 5: Online / Ecosystem: Stable / Yield: 0.4% above target / Nutrition level: Irregular – Launch rebalancing now? / Soil moisture: Low – Launching irrigation in sub-sector 3 and 8 / Weather: Stable / Pollution: Low / Harvester Z6339 down – System scan in process / Actions: Launch investigation on sub-sector 15 yield anomalies upon operator confirmation…”
What sounds like part of a science fiction movie, could soon be reality. When it comes to climate change and resource scarcity, Dole, the world’s largest producer of fruit and vegetables, is starting to feel the heat (pun intended). Precision agriculture is only one of many potential solutions to secure the world’s food supply.
Climate Change and Planetary Boundaries: A new age for global agriculture
The 21st century will pose significant challenges on global vegetable and fruit production:
- Demographics: By 2050, the world population is expected to grow by 30%.[1] Global food production will need to expand significantly to feed this growing population.
- Urbanization: By 2050, 65% of the world population will live in cities.[2] The increasing physical distance between food production and food consumption will not only pose logistical challenges but also come with the adverse environmental impact of a growing need for transportation.
At the same time there are significant constraints, increasingly limiting agricultural productivity:
- Land degradation: Unsustainable farming practices like over-fertilization are reducing agricultural productivity.
- Water scarcity: Constraints on water will pose significant challenges for current, highly water-intensive farming practices.
- Climate change: Over the coming decades, the adverse impact of climate change is expected to reduce agriculture yields by ~11%[3].
- Biodiversity: Today, only 12 plant species provide 75% of our total food supply. While monocultures are highly effective at maximizing yields, they are optimized to fit certain conditions and therefore at great risks if these conditions change, e.g. due to extreme weather patterns.[4]
Around the globe, agriculture companies will need to adjust their business models to address these challenges and ensure global food supply. The need for change goes beyond the adaptation to upcoming environmental regulation. The trends pointed out above themselves will pose a significant threat if Dole fails to adjust. On the other hand, there is a sizeable opportunity in embracing the change and succeeding in driving productivity growth in an adverse environment. When it comes to food, the 21st century will soon turn into a seller’s market.
Battle plan: What Dole is already doing today
Dole has built its sustainability strategy on the pillars highlighted below –
- Leading practices for water management and recycling techniques which has enabled reduction of water usage to only 18 liters (compared to 150 liters) per banana box packaging.
- Engaging in reducing carbon footprint and soil conservation through new tools like soil map and thickness analysis, organic amends.
Looking ahead: What’s next Dole?
While Dole Food Company is already taking steps in the right direction, a more fundamental change to the firm’s farming approach will be required to sustain the upcoming challenges. Two major farming innovations represent an opportunity to drive profitable and sustainable growth in the changing environment.
Precision agriculture, also called precision farming, is an approach, which aims to maximize productivity in traditional farming environments. Essentially, precision agriculture uses information technologies to collect data on all elements, which impact farming yields, and makes it possible to control and optimize farming practices accordingly. The combination of satellites, drones and sensors as well as remote sensing technologies enable the development of precise geomaps, which provide detailed, up to date information on soil types and nutrient levels for particular field locations. Through high precision positioning systems like GPS and automated steering systems, self-driving vehicles can follow precise trajectories on mapped fields.
This way, input factors such as fertilizers and seeds can be applied precisely to specific field locations, matching the exact local requirements using variable rate technology.[5][6] Collecting vast amounts of data across the world will enable the industry to develop a deep understanding of the impact of farming practices (e.g. fertilization) as well as external factors (e.g. weather), on agriculture yields, thereby giving farmers the knowledge to optimize yields. Some experts believe that over the next 30 years, precision agriculture could result in yield improvements of up to 70%, meeting the need for increased food production, while addressing the upcoming productivity challenges.
Vertical farming is another agriculture innovation, which could help address the upcoming challenges. Vertical farms are high-tech greenhouses, which excel at yield optimization through the use of hydroponics. Rather than simply controlling light and humidity as in traditional greenhouses, hydroponics give farmers the opportunity to control all factors, which are relevant for plant growth, including nutrition and fertilization. In hydroponics, plants grow in growth substrates like rockwool.
Other than with traditional soil, these enable almost perfect control over the dispersion of nutrients and fertilizers across plant roots. This way, ideal growing conditions can be replicated, resulting in significant yield improvements, while minimizing resource inputs.[7] As an example, recent research achieved to increase lettuce yields by a factor of 11 while using 250 times less water compared to traditional growing.[8] In vertical farms, hydroponics are cultivated on vertically stacked layers, optimizing surface use. The extreme form of this would be the cultivation of plants in skyscrapers, so called “plantscrapers”.
Vertical farming addresses a number of the agricultural challenges pointed out beforehand. Hydroponics are immune to climate change and soil degradation while significantly reducing the threat of water scarcity. At the same time, yields can be improved considerably addressing global food demand. The beauty of hydroponics is, that they neither require the use of pesticides nor genetically modified seeds to achieve superior yields. Being able to produce food in the middle of urbanized areas in “plant factories” alleviate the negative environmental footprint of large-scale food transportation.
Investing into precision agriculture and vertical farming early one will be key to defend Dole’s market-leading positioning, while significantly improving its environmental footprint.
Reference
[1] http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/2015-report.html
[2] https://www.undispatch.com/65-of-all-humans-will-live-in-cities-by-2050-the-un-wants-you-to-be-prepared/
[3] http://www.pnas.org/content/111/9/3274.full
[4] http://www.chgeharvard.org/topic/biodiversity-and-agriculture
[5] http://cema-agri.org/page/precision-farming-key-technologies-concepts
[6] https://agfundernews.com/what-is-precision-agriculture.html
[7] http://www.simplyhydro.com/whatis.htm
[8] http://www.growponics.co.uk/research-hydroponics-lettuce-yields-11-times-more-produce-and-saves-250-times-on-water-compared-to-conventional-grown/
Authors –
BENEDICT KOEHNCKE, ABHINAV SHARMA, EDGAR XIE and SOUMYA RAJA