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Smart Farming
Overview
Smart farming can resolve future food shortages
New technology is allowing new levels of efficiency throughout the agriculture value chain. Smart farming tech includes smart machinery like robots, software solutions for crop management, and drones and satellites for land management and crop protection. Internet of Things (IoT) and big data advancements have strongly supported the evolution of smart farming and agricultural technologies have become increasingly crucial given steadily growing demand for food, despite limited availability of farmland and rising labor costs.
Industry Updates
Market Sizing
The US smart farming market revenue per year could reach USD 1.0–2.2 billion by 2028
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Use cases
Combining technology with traditional farming practices has given rise to various smart farming technologies and solutions. This is driven by the need to optimize and enhance efficiency, productivity, and sustainability across the farming value chain. Most use cases are aggregated in the food products subsegment (under consumer staples) and support managing various facets of farming operations, including supply chain, crops, livestock, irrigation, cash flows, and more.
Market Mapping
Crop monitoring and analytics software solution providers account for more than one-third of our list of disruptors and incumbents. The majority of these startups were established after 2014 and are at early or growth stages of product development and customer acquisition. These players have attracted total funding in the range of USD 1.4 billion–1.5 billion.
Marketplace operators account for only a small portion of our list of disruptors. Two key players in this segment, Farmers Business Network and Produce Pay, have attracted the most amount of funding—in the USD 920 million–1.3 billion range. These startups connect participants across the agriculture value chain to streamline the farming process. Startups providing smart machinery such as agricultural robots and autonomous tractors closely follow, having received accumulated funding in the range of USD 600–650 million.
Agribots/ Tractors
Marketplace Operators
Crops Monitoring & Analytics
Livestock Monitoring & Analytics
Drones and Satellites Imagery
The Disruptors
Most smart farming startups focus across the entire agriculture value chain and appear to be at the Go-to-Market or Expansion stages. The startups have mostly passed the prototype stage and have launched their product attracting a customer base. In addition, startups in the Minimum Viable Product stage, such as Foodful and AgriSync, are in the Go-to-Market Expansion stage with products that are ready to use.
Software solution providers who aim to serve across the entire value chain enabling precise decision-making form the majority of the startups. Even those players that produce smart equipment like drones (UAV IQ) or autonomous tractors (Kray Technologies) focus on software and development of a platform for farm management. Precision agriculture is even a priority for players that focus on conserving water through the agriculture process, such as SWIIM Systems. Machine learning and AI are being increasingly adopted for this purpose. Startups like Farm Lead, which focus on creating a marketplace for farmers are exceptions.
Funding History
Competitive Analysis
Incumbents
Incumbents are beginning to partner with startups
Most incumbents in the industry are players established in providing hardware and software solutions solely to the agriculture industry. These companies have been quick to adopt smart farming precision techniques and big data analytics.
Some companies, such as Trimble and John Deere, serve industries beyond agriculture, which may better enable them to provide their products and services throughout the agricultural value chain rather than simply focusing on a particular segment.
The industry is also seeing software-oriented companies with backgrounds in artificial intelligence and big data including NVIDIA, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM use their expertise to enter the Smart Farming market.
Incumbents that have had a head start on growth and expansion through in-house development are now also partnering with or acquiring startups with the potential to expand product reach. Newcomers like Amazon and NVIDIA are also following this trend.
Notable Investors
