The plant nutrition and crop protection industry play a crucial role in catering the food demand of the increasing global population. Technology advancements and innovations in this category of businesses are primary drivers as they are highly regulated by international and regional regulations. Manufacturers are highly investing in technology to cope up with these stringent regulations and offer products that lead to high yields as well as high quality agricultural outputs.
The farm-agro equipment industry is highly dependent on the labor, climate conditions, demand fluctuations, and government regulations. Global trends in farm mechanization are need of the hour to meet the global food demand while overcoming the rising labor costs, unavailability of labor, and unfavorable climatic conditions. High investments of manufacturing companies and government support has led to a global shift from traditional farming to modern farming techniques. The manufacturing innovations in collaboration with the upcoming technology trends of Internet of Things (IoT) and farm automation is highly anticipated which will help reduce production, time, deliver high farm efficiencies, and enhanced agricultural product quality.
The agriculture and feed technology are a major part of the modern agriculture and animal feed practices. Manufacturers are emphasizing on implementation of technology in diversifying the production processes, finding alternatives to current protein sources, maintain full traceability from raw material to consumption, maintain high levels of food & feed safety, and ensure high functionality of agricultural and animal feed products. Regulations bodies along with the manufacturers are keeping an effort to produce greater control over the agricultural & animal feed outputs, processing, distribution, and storage to offer higher efficiencies, lower prices, high food & feed safety standards, and reduced environmental & ecological impact.
Global feed industry is being bolstered by hike in demand for increasing global meat consumption, and high demand for protein-rich products which has in turn massively boosted the demand for animal feed. Feed manufacturers are strictly focusing on safety standards as well as high quality animal feed additives to elevate the meat quality and prevent diseases in livestock. Leading manufacturers aligning themselves with the regulatory authorities to use growth promoters and specialty feed ingredients to aid in optimizing animal health and nutrition.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the emerging technology, which can be defined as a branch of computer science concerned with building smart machines, which are capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. Data analytics is the science to analyze raw data to make conclusions about the given information. With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning models, the data for usage of water, fertilizers, soil, temperature, weather conditions, and others could be leveraged in real time to obtain useful insights which can help to improve the yield with limited resources. The demand for artificial intelligence technology is increasing in the agriculture sector to detect the diseases, pest, and poor nutrition of farms as well as detect and target weeds to help decide the use of appropriate herbicides. Data analytics can help to overcome the environmental challenges, such as drought, unpredictable weather, severe storms, and changing insect behavior by utilizing and analyzing data to help navigate shifts in environmental conditions, which can help farmers prepare for challenges and make resource management decisions. Leading data analytics companies, such as IBM and AgNext technologies are launching tools for agriculture using data analytics and artificial intelligence, which directly aim to provide insights on crop plantation, plowing, and harvesting to farmers. The farmers are adapting the new techniques, which involve artificial intelligence and data analytics to improve the farming efficiency and gain better yield, which will surge the demand for AI and data analytics in the agriculture field.
Eco-friendly alternative protein sources include sources for animal feed, which help reduce the environmental impact and contribute to sustainable environment. These sources include insect protein, cultured meat, single cell protein, and others. With growing population and increasing demand for meat and animal products, the need for cost-effective feed management strategies, which are healthy for animals as well as environment, is increasing. The growing concerns surrounded by deforestation, greenhouse gas emission, biodiversity, and others, have increased the need for alternative protein sources and animal feed ingredients. Many companies and government bodies such as FAO have increased their research and development to find eco-friendly alternative protein source for animal feed such as insects, earthworms, seaweed, pea protein, single-cell protein, and others.
CRISPR (clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeat) technology is a significant new technique to genome editing that allows greater selectivity while decreasing the element of chance. CRISPR in conjunction with the Cas9 enzyme is a powerful and specific DNA-cutting tool that enables researchers to edit DNA by inserting or deleting particular sequences in genomes, thereby encoding unique features. This technology is used to accelerate the generation of bacterial strains that are used to create feed enzymes, and it also replaces operations that took months to perform previously. CRISPR-Cas9 is far more efficient than previous approaches, which rely on microbiological screening for desired traits. CRISPR-Cas9 technologies are being used to speed up the development and expression of next-generation enzymes for animal health and feeding. Enzymes, as animal feed additives, help in accelerating the chemical processes that liberate nutrients from the feed, and also help in improving the productivity of livestock. Enzymes, when added to feed, assist in breaking down difficult-to-digest materials and increase the availability of energy, protein, and other nutrients, enhancing animal growth performance, feed digestibility, and nutrient utilization. Animal nutrition manufacturers are attempting to create sustainable and safe solutions by manufacturing innovative enzymes and feed additive products as the worldwide demand for meat, meat by-products, and eggs rises.
Regenerative agriculture is a set of farming principles and practices that aim to repair and improve the farm's overall ecosystem by emphasizing soil health while paying attention to water management, fertilizer use, and other factors. It is a farming system that improves rather than destroys or depletes the resources it uses. According to desertification reports, there is a loss of around 24 billion tons of fertile soil per year globally. Agricultural soils that are left bare or excessively tilled are exposed to wind and water, causing erosion of the carbon-rich topsoil. Regenerative agriculture practices, such as conservation tillage, rotation, and cover crops, ensure that agricultural fields are not left bare and that carbon in the soil is fixed rather than lost. Regenerative agricultural approaches improve soil biodiversity and organic matter, resulting in more resilient soils that can endure the effects of climate change, such as flooding and drought. It also reduces erosion and runoff, resulting in better water quality both on and off the farm. Regenerative agricultural has economic benefits that include cost savings through reduced usage of chemicals such as fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and antibiotics, which have a beneficial influence on farm and ranch profitability.
