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.
The key driver for rising animal protein market in Asia-Pacific is not only limited to the rapidly increasing population in this region but also the change in the consumer taste preferences across the countries, and youth experimenting with international culinary preferences. The region is also a largest food service industry in the world and thus attracting international collaborations and expansions in the region. Animal feed manufacturers are taking into consideration the changing consumer preferences, specific requirements for food service industry, and maintaining the safety standards to expand their business in Asia-Pacific region to capture the local business advantage.
Livestock feeds are highly dependent on local feed resources such as grasslands, and cultivated pastures. Feed manufacturers are adopting newer technologies to produce products with high protein contents from food waste, by-product of grains, crop residues, and other plant products to overcome the traditionally used animal feeds. Feed manufacturing companies are collaborating with the research institutes and laboratories to increased testing of potential feed resources for nutrient contents to limit dependency on local resources impacting directly on the livestock productivity while protecting the environment.
Climate changes, temperature rises, and increased levels of carbon dioxide are key factors that are potentially lowering the crop yields globally. To maintain the supply and demand of the crops & grains under unfavorable environmental conditions, it has become crucial to increase agricultural productivity per unit cultivated area and provide sufficient food supply to world’s population. Many domestic and international agrochemical companies have increased their R&D investments to test, prove, and promote use of newer products such as genetically modified seeds, agricultural biologicals, agricultural surfactants, adjuvants, and biostimulants to help elevate agricultural productivity.
Internet of things is one of the potential disruptions in the fields of agriculture and livestock over next decade. Many farmer clusters, livestock producers, and processing companies are exploring the technology side for farm and livestock management. Leading companies are investing in offering low-costs IoT applications to transform farming and livestock production through real-time data monitoring using sensors to capture, process, and analyze production data and patterns to increase crop productivity, resource conservation, and helping producers to better control costs.
