Part Two

Digital farming: A bird’s-eye view

Technologies in the sky are helping growers to make better decisions about how they manage their crops at ground level. Today, they can call upon sophisticated tools such as satellites and drones that capture high-resolution images of land quickly.

Images can then be processed to help farmers make crucial decisions about their crops, such as what they should plant, and when and where they should plant it. According to Global Market Insights, the agricultural drone market will be worth over $1 billion by 2024. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch is expecting the sector to generate 100,000 jobs in the U.S. and $82 billion in economic activity between 2015 and 2025.

Having reams of data collected by satellites and drones is all well and good, but making sense of it is another challenge altogether. It’s why the concept of digital farming has become so important in recent years. It uses data collection, data storage, analytics and decision modeling to unlock farming's potential.

Digital technologies are rapidly transforming agriculture. Dan Burdett Syngenta’s head of digital agriculture