Smart Crop Monitoring Market

Market Overview

The global smart crop monitoring market size was valued at USD 2.16 billion in 2022. It is estimated to reach USD 6.25 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 12.55% during the forecast period (2023–2031). The expansion of the global smart crop monitoring market is primarily attributed to increased awareness of the benefits of alternative and optimized farming techniques that entail conventional farming. Consequently, adopting advanced technologies in the agriculture industry has prompted favorable initiatives, policies, and support from governments across the globe, particularly in emerging economies, thereby fostering market expansion.

Smart crop monitoring has emerged as a promising technology for various farming applications, including detecting soil quality, climatic conditions, and crop needs. The impact of smart crop monitoring deployment has ranged from crop protection, pest control, weeding, and other farming applications in local farms to the remote sensing survey of grassland, forests, and global agriculture.

Smart crop monitoring can help differentiate between crops impacted by excessively dry or wet conditions, pests, weeds, fungus infestations, and climate-related damage. Pictures can be acquired throughout the developing season to identify issues and monitor treatment progress. Therefore, smart crop monitoring can help transform the agriculture sector by introducing more precise agriculture data that can bring efficiency to farming operations. Smart crop monitoring can also help bridge social sustainability by substituting arduous labor when there is limited availability of manual labor.

Market Dynamics

Market Drivers

Higher Yields as Compared to Conventional Farming

The primary concern with conventional agricultural food production is the dependability of soil, climate, and land conditions. In conventional systems, these conditions must be ideal for the crop to be grown. This causes less food production than a farm's actual capacity and adds to the concern of food security. With the increased concerns over food security and high yield, growers worldwide are gradually shifting toward smart crop monitoring and other digitized techniques, sensors being one of them, to optimize farming processes.

One of the primary aspects propelling the growth in adopting the smart crop monitoring market is the higher yield of using agricultural technology. Adopting smart crop monitoring technology allows farmers to maximize yields using minimal resources. Therefore, shifts from conventional to using smart systems as a primary device in farming will have significant benefits, thereby creating higher demand for this product over the forecast period.

Government Support and Initiatives for Smart Crop Monitoring Equipment 

The introduction of smart crop monitoring technology in agriculture and farms has brought immense potential to bolster agricultural productivity. This has resulted in governments worldwide introducing initiatives to adapt and deploy smart crop monitoring, where agriculture has been seen as one of the favorable end-user industries.

For instance, in emerging countries, such as India, the state government of Karnataka has signed an MoU with Microsoft Corporation to use its cutting-edge innovative technologies to help farmers increase agricultural productivity. These technologies are led by the deployment of smart crop monitoring technology, which is expected to lead the country into its new phase of digital agriculture. Introducing such initiatives among countries worldwide is likely to generate greater opportunities in the global smart crop monitoring market.

Market Restraint

High Set-Up Costs

In agriculture, the adoption of technology is still low, and one of the reasons for the slow adoption of smart crop monitoring and its associated technology is the high equipment cost. Sensors and drones need to be supported with additional software and hardware to derive and use the data sets. The hardware cost is high since the technology is quite new and offers a wide range of solutions for the agricultural industry. This might be a major hindrance in adopting the technology, restraining market growth.

Market Opportunities

Increased Market Opportunity in Developing Countries

China and India are the most populated nations in the world and are striving to meet the food demands of the masses. Both countries are growing at a good economic rate, investing aggressively in sustainable development to raise their standard of living. With increasing economic development, the basic income of the inhabitants has increased. Therefore, there is an increased demand for better quality, higher yield of food production, and better and calculated decision-making abilities while performing agricultural operations.

Additionally, developing countries experience many commercial and government initiatives and investments in the growing industries, including agriculture. Therefore, the market players that provide smart crop monitoring technologies, which aid in improving yield quality, are expected to experience great market opportunities in developing countries such as India, China, Ukraine, Brazil, and others.

Regional Analysis

Based on region, the global smart crop monitoring market is bifurcated into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the U.K., China, South America, and the Middle East and Africa.

North America is the most significant global smart crop monitoring market shareholder and is anticipated to exhibit a CAGR of 11.79% during the forecast period. The market for digital and smart agricultural practices is evolving at a constant pace in the region. The high growth is primarily attributable to the increased adoption of technology-driven procedures, the emphasis on alternative farming methods, and the potential incorporation of high-investment equipment in the agricultural sector. The application of smart crop monitoring has improved the production process and serves as an ideal solution to the region's demand for food. Due to technological advancement, North America is expected to lead the global market. Likewise, many leading smart crop monitoring providers, such as Robert Bosch GmbH, Microsoft Corporation, and IBM Corporation, operate in the region. Therefore, many major smart crop monitoring equipment and system manufacturers are developing advanced smart crop monitoring systems to attain a firm grip over this region.

The U.K. is estimated to exhibit a CAGR of 10.92% over the forecast period. The decline in conventional farming in the country due to bad climatic conditions will drive the growth and development of the smart crop monitoring market in the U.K. In the past decade, the United Kingdom has witnessed a notable surge in the implementation of mechanization and automation within its agricultural sector, leading to a discernible decline in the need for manual labor. Moreover, labor inputs are expected to drop further with the rise of AI, IoT, big data, and machine learning solutions for efficient farm management and yield optimization. However, the application of artificial intelligence in the agricultural sector is still in its early introduction phase.

Additionally, the U.K. government intends to prioritize incorporating emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, in the country's agriculture set-up. With the incorporation of technological solutions in the U.K., the development and adoption of smart crop monitoring are likely significant.

In the European market, the presence of major agriculture OEMs provides a big customer base for smart crop monitoring operators in the region, as well as various sensor manufacturers, such as Robert Bosch GmbH and TE Connectivity, provide various partnership options for smart crop monitoring operators to enhance their supply chain. The European Union has also recognized the benefits of implementing technology in the agricultural industry to make it profitable, promoting a culture in EU nations. Growers' knowledge has increased concurrently with the ongoing product development by corporations and universities. Therefore, the area is expected to see enormous demands for smart crop monitoring in the coming years with government backing and increased awareness.

Furthermore, Europe is one of the regions in the world where the emphasis on food safety and security is high. This adds to the demand for integrating smart crop monitoring in the agricultural sector in the region, acting as a driver for the growth of the smart crop monitoring market.

The Asia-Pacific region is an important contributor to the global food chain, contributing to approximately 19% of global agriculture and food exports in the last decade. The region accounts for approximately 19% of global food and agriculture exports and roughly 31% of food and agriculture imports. According to the United Nations, over 60% of the world's population resides in the Asia-Pacific region,e which is projected to grow exponentially. The region has a large and growing population, rising income, and rapidly increasing middle class will continue to boost the demand for food and agricultural commodities and resources. This is expected to drive the smart crop monitoring market in the Asia-Pacific region.

In the past decade, agricultural activities in the South American region have grown and developed into a huge agricultural produce exporter. Major agricultural products offered by the region are coffee, sugar, soybeans, manioc, rice, maize, cotton, edible beans, and wheat. In the South American region, there is significant emphasis on adopting new farm techniques to increase agricultural production. The countries in the region are increasing technological adoption in their agricultural sector to cater to the growing food demand. This will also establish the country's export sector and help expand the economy of countries, which is expected to drive market growth.

Segmental Analysis

The global smart crop monitoring market is segmented by application, type, and technology.

Based on application, the global smart crop monitoring market is divided into soil monitoring, weather forecasting, yield monitoring, crop protection, and others. 

The crop protection segment is the largest revenue contributor to the market and is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 13.11% throughout the forecast period. Crop health management service refers to varying the quantity of crop protection chemicals and fertilizers to be applied to a particular area to achieve the best results, leading to a large amount of cost savings and yield improvement. A study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization revealed that farmers lose about 30% to 40% of their produce due to crop diseases and pests yearly. Therefore, crop protection from insects, rodents, birds, bacteria, and diseases is crucial in improving yield, crop quality, and price while reducing wastage.

Measuring the soil properties by detecting the different frequencies of light reflectances, such as mid-infrared, near-infrared, and polarized light spectrums, are some of the prerequisites of a soil monitoring process. Likewise, the availability and introduction of a wide range and category of soil monitoring systems, including sensors to fulfill crop requirements, have thereby increased the traction of the soil monitoring concept. For instance, Sensoterra, a sensor-developing company, is set to introduce new wireless soil moisture sensors across potential regions, including North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

Based on type, the global smart crop monitoring market is bifurcated into hardware, software, and services. 

The services segment dominates the global market and is projected to exhibit a CAGR of 14.26% over the forecast period. The smart crop monitoring market support services include various farm-related services such as general advisory, farm maintenance and support, and crop-specific consultation. These services combine various equipment and software tools that help manage all the farming activities. In addition, several services include installing advanced equipment and maintaining the systems for better functioning. These services enable farmers to manage large cropland areas while giving distinct attention to each land segment and conforming to high quality and health standards.

Hardware as a product offering is primarily used in agricultural systems to integrate and communicate with different software platforms. Further, it is instrumental in monitoring and controlling the smart crop monitoring systems. These are installed at the site of the end user, which in return sends digital signals to the software systems integrated within the network located at the data center. Moreover, there is an increasing demand for high computation and increasing memory capacity hardware for the execution of algorithms enabled within the software platform.

Based on technology, the global smart crop monitoring market is segmented into sensing and imagery, variable-rate technology (VRT), guidance technology, and automation and robotics.

The automation and robotics segment owns the highest market share and is estimated to exhibit a CAGR of 14.42% during the forecast period. Robotics is among the most in-demand product technologies in the smart crop monitoring market. This is due to increasing labor shortages, growing demand for food production, and increasing need for precision agriculture. In addition, agricultural robots can operate independently because of technologies like computer vision, machine learning, and deep learning, which give them ultra-precision skills. Agricultural robots increase the productivity of smart crop monitoring by performing various field operations, such as sowing, harvesting/picking, spraying, weeding, etc., repetitively with increased speed and accuracy.

Variable-rate technology (VRT) is the method of utilization of agricultural inputs at varying rates in proper zones throughout a field. This method ensures efficiency in input application in the fields and ensures effectiveness, sustainability, and environmental safety. Users can direct their attention toward the region that yields the highest financial gain by utilizing this aspect of intelligent crop monitoring. Variable-rate technology services are conducted in a one-stage approach or a two-stage approach.

Recent Developments

• August 2023- BharatRohan Airborne Innovations Private Limited, a pioneer in agri-tech drone services, and the Smart Village Movement announced a transformative partnership. This partnership will bring drone crop monitoring to ginger farms in Meghalaya.
• June 2023- PepsiCo India partnered with agriculture cloud company Cropin to launch a crop intelligence platform for monitoring potato yields via dashboards interoperable with mobile applications.