OpEd
Digital agriculture is no longer an optional luxury; it is a necessity
The climate emergency is here. Yet in the face of increasing commitments to decarbonising energy or supporting electric vehicles, one of the most influential climate adaptation tools, digital agriculture, is on the periphery, misapplied, or accessible only to affluent, high-tech farms in the global north.
This isn’t a missed opportunity. It is a perilous omission. Unless we act quickly to expand digital agriculture based on equity and place, the world risks losing its capacity to feed itself.
Droughts in Spain, floods in Nepal, and heat waves in India and North America are no longer stand-alone climate events but indicators of a speeding global breakdown in agricultural stability. In 2023 alone, extreme weather events disrupted large parts of the world’s agrarian belt, causing widespread crop failures, supply chain collapses, and explosive increases in food insecurity.
The World Food Programme warns that over 345 million people faced acute food insecurity in 2022, more than double the number in 2019. Climate scientists are unequivocal: as temperatures rise, rainfall patterns shift, and storms intensify, the global food system is approaching a breaking point.
Agriculture is a driver of climate change as well as a victim of it. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, food systems produce 22% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than the transportation sector. But the same systems are already being destroyed by climate impacts.
Unpredictable monsoons in South Asia, extended droughts in sub-Saharan Africa, and wildfires in California and the Mediterranean are strangling productivity, degrading soils, and causing displacement. Wheat yields declined sharply in India by 10% to 15% in 2022 as a result of extreme heat stress, while olive oil production in Spain dropped almost 50% in 2023 because of drought.
Digital agriculture is no longer an optional luxury. It can play a role in both climate change mitigation and adaptation. World leaders must prioritise digital agriculture innovation, development, and application to enhance resilience in a heating world.
Digital agriculture in practice
It includes monitoring drought areas with satellites, irrigation control using sensors, AI-predicted pest warnings, mobile alerts, and remote market price access. These technologies enable farmers to make quicker, more informed decisions under uncertain circumstances.
In the United States, more than 50% of soybean, wheat, and corn acreage uses precision agriculture tools such as GPS-guided equipment and variable-rate fertilizer systems, technologies that have raised yields without using more water and chemicals, according to the USDA.
The IBM Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture integrates weather forecasting, Internet of Things intelligence, and machine learning to help U.S. farmers with real-time decisions on sowing, irrigation, and fertiliser application, lowering chemical runoff and increasing climate-smart productivity.
In Brazil, satellite-based irrigation systems in areas prone to drought, such as the Cerrado, have minimised water wastage and prevented crop loss. In Kenya, farmers get SMS-based climate forecasts that enable them to adjust planting schedules. Also, aWhere’s climate-smart agriculture platform provides hyperlocal weather forecasts and agronomic guidance to farmers in most countries, enabling smallholder farmers to make weather-sensitive decisions regarding the timing of planting, spraying, or harvesting.
In India, drones with multispectral imaging detect crop stress even before symptoms appear visible, reducing yield loss. The PlantVillage Nuru app, which is built by the Pennsylvania State University and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, enables farmers in Asia, Africa, and the Americas to identify pests and diseases through smartphone cameras and provides climate-resilient measures in local languages.
In France, the Copernicus satellite program helps European Union farmers by monitoring soil moisture levels and enabling subsidy-attached sustainable practices. The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change service, or C3S, provides publicly accessible data on soil moisture, drought warning, and seasonal crop yield forecasts, allowing farmers in France, Italy, and Spain to change planting and watering schedules as climate uncertainty intensifies.
Tomorrow.io provides hyperlocal, real-time weather warnings and out-of-the-box extreme climate risk forecasts, assisting farmers and governments in Latin America and Asia in taking preemptive action against floods, droughts, and storms. Also in India, Farmonaut provides satellite-derived data on water stress and nutrient shortage directly to farmers’ phones in local languages, allowing action at the right time without broadband or expensive hardware.
Despite the clear benefits, access is most unequal. A study reports that most smallholder farmers in low-income countries are excluded from digital access because they lack smartphones, have poor coverage, or lack literacy. In Africa, women are 37% less likely than men to use mobile internet, reducing their access to early warning advisories. Rural youth and Indigenous farmers usually don’t have tools in their language or applicable to their cropping systems. Technologies developed in Silicon Valley, for example, could demand perpetual internet connectivity, ignore cultural norms, or expect bank-linked digital payments, rendering them unsuitable for the majority of the global south.
The GEOGLAM Crop Monitor, funded by USAID and NASA, gives early warning information on crop loss in nations such as Senegal, enabling governments and NGOs to plan in time for interventions to prevent food crises. The outcome: Digital solutions accumulate in reports, not in the hands of the farmers who would benefit most.
A new way to design technology
A paradigm shift is needed now, not only in innovation but in how we disseminate and design technology. First, we need to codesign digital tools with farmers, not for them. Platforms such as Digital Green have demonstrated that peer-to-peer video exchange, particularly in local languages, can have dramatic impacts on adoption. More than 1.48 million farmers, 94% of whom are women, have been reached through such participatory, bottom-up methods.
Second, investment in rural infrastructure is critical. Low-cost mobile data, solar-powered devices, and offline-capable platforms are key to resilience. Third, climate finance needs to be reallocated to smallholder adaptation. While agriculture generates almost one-third of global emissions, food systems capture only 4% of climate finance, and a mere one-fifth of it is for smallholder resilience. Studies show that investing $16 billion annually in adaptation can bring 78 million people out of hunger, while $170 billion will cover smallholder adaptation end-to-end globally. Digital agriculture should not be viewed as a pilot or marginal program but as a central infrastructure investment for survival in the climate.
Digital agriculture as a global public good
Digital agriculture is already proving to be effective in mitigating climate change. The system of rice intensification, when combined with digital technologies such as soil maps and moisture sensors, has been indicated to decrease methane emissions by up to 70%, lower water usage by 25% to 50% and increase yield by 20% to 50%% in Southeast Asia.
In the EU, remote sensing platforms now inform fertilizer subsidies, applying them precisely and minimizing runoff. In the U.S. alone, the Climate-Smart Commodities program, worth more than $3 billion in value, is adding digital solutions to regenerative agriculture on over 141 pilot projects. It’s not theoretical. It’s already underway. But not quickly enough, and not equitably enough.
For there to be a food-secure and climate-resilient future, digital agriculture needs to be considered a global public good. That involves investing in open-access, interoperable, and farmer-owned platforms, not closed, proprietary ones.
Tools must be built for use offline, in local languages, requiring low energy. Inclusion must be a tangible metric: How many women are reached? How many marginalized groups are included in product design? If farmers are not represented when tools are developed, they won’t be at the center when tools are implemented.
In 2024, more than 295 million people experienced acute hunger. By 2030, climate change could push 130 million more people into poverty, most of them living in rural areas. By 2050, we’ll need to produce 60% more food, with less water, more pests, and increasingly degraded
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