Agriculture Mechanization – An Overview

standardization with the farmer in mind as a user of ICT. Recently, several organizations have been
working to develop standards, and some improvements have already been developed or are in process
(ICT Standards Board, 2006; U.S. Access Board, 2010).1
Centers that store machine, agronomic, and social knowledge will aggregate data to provide valueadded
services for machinery operation and farm management. Some of these data may be collected by
farmers, and some will be provided by public and private sources of agricultural information. Some data
sources, such as remote sensing, have been mentioned, but a number of others will emerge as the
aggregated knowledge in efficient production agriculture increases.
Centers with machine knowledge can help increase equipment uptime and anticipate machine system
failures based on vehicle state variables in operation. Machine data that provide a better understanding
of machine use can also lead to more efficient system designs that meet the needs of farmers.
Agronomic data will create new opportunities for intensive modeling and simulation that can improve
production efficiency by anticipating the impact of weather and various production methods.
In the future, ICT will enable the development of new platforms that can provide more support to
production agriculture by taking advantage of opportunities to connect farmers, the value chain, and
society in ways that are beyond present capabilities. The German-funded iGreen project, for example, is
working on location-based services and knowledge-sharing networks for combining distributed,
heterogeneous public and private information sources as steps toward future ICT systems (iGreen,
2011). Today, we are extremely close to having true CPS and control systems for measuring the “pulse”
of agricultural productivity on planet Earth.
v. Future of Agricultural Mechanisation Seems Promising
With the involvement of digital technology, the future of agricultural mechanisation seems quite
promising.
With the digital revolution quickly transforming every major sector of the global economy, it is no
surprise the magnitude of impact this revolution is having in the world of agriculture.
Today, we see sophisticated technologies such as temperature and moisture sensors, robots, GPS
technology, precision agriculture, amongst others being used to enhance the productivity and
profitability of farmers across continents, as well as keep expensive assets, such as tractors, safe while
they work on the field, usually very far away from their owner’s line of sight.
Secure food system
Taking a close look at mechanisation specifically, so much is being done, technology wise, to ensure that
we are headed toward a secure food system even as our global population continues to skyrocket.
Companies such as Zenvus, Tro-Tro, Kitovu, ThriveAgric & Farmcrowdy are all enabling the success of
mechanisation one way or another through their offerings which are largely targeted at smallholder
farmers.