Smart Agriculture.

Smart Agriculture.

The adoption of advanced technologies and data-driven farm operations to optimize and improve sustainability in agricultural production.

Background of Smart Agriculture.

Bangladesh is home to 16.5 million farmer families, with nearly 6.8 million farmers cultivating other people's land (BBS Agri Census 2019). Regarding employment generation, agriculture has consistently been the largest contributor to all the sectors in Bangladesh. About 40% of the population is employed in this sector, and about 60% of people depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Currently, 37.2% of the population is under financial coverage in the agriculture sector. Over the years, Bangladesh’s transformation in the agriculture sector was exemplary.

1. Farmers' access to information, inputs, and resources to implement real-time decision-making: Due to the absence of integrated service delivery platforms for farmers, inefficient access to inputs and resources like seeds, fertilizers, equipment, etc hinders farmers to achieve maximum yield. Also due to intermediaries’ involvement and lack of consumer market access, day-by-day farming becomes less profitable. 

2. Multi-layered real-time decision-making: Agriculture sector policymakers, research organizations, and government authorities face problems in decision-making because of challenges associated with data accumulation, sorting, and analyzing. Also, farmers are unable to take agri-productionn decisions and climate-sensitive decisions due to a lack of insight from agri data and data literacy.

 3. Agriculture supply-chain bottleneck within the agro-processing industry: Several studies have shown that the transportation process accounts for roughly 40% of Agri-Product waste. Additionally, consumer access and food processing still follow traditional linkage methods. Although we have become self-sufficient in grains and livestock, there is a huge opportunity untapped in the export market. The reason Bangladesh has minuscule to almost no presence in the global agri-export market is a lack of Agri product standardization.

4. Farmers' access to smart solutions like advanced automated farming technologies, techniques, and 4IR devices: Due to the use of primitive farming methods and technologies, the growth of agriculture productivity is sub-par compared to other sectors. There is lacking of 4IR tech-based solutions to address productivity issues in an effective manner. 

5. Inadequate linkage between Farm-Agriculture Extension-Research: With governments 8 dedicated agriculture research organizations, working isolatedly to produce solutions. There is no collaboration and co-creation among them. Also learning from international best practices and collaboration with national and international academia are absent. 

6. Readiness of future-farmers-friendly policies: Bangladesh government has 18 departments for agriculture research, development, and extension. All the policies adopted by these organizations have led the agriculture sector into a sustainable trajectory. But with the imminent impact of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), the agriculture sector needs to embrace policies for access to digital finance, digital market, and automated advanced technological innovation culture. Objective Smart agriculture interventions can play a key role in increasing productivity, accessibility, and quality of agricultural products along with uplifting farmers’ living standards. a2i has been associated with the Smart Bangladesh Vision 2041 since its emergence. Smart Bangladesh is about being inclusive, about the people, the citizens of Bangladesh, built on the 4 pillars: Smart Citizens, Smart Government, Smart Economy, and Smart Society. Smart Agriculture is one of the key pillars and with respect to it, a2i has set specific milestones which align with the Smart Agriculture vision. The milestones under the Smart Agriculture initiative are listed below: 

1. Farmer-Friendly Smart Agriculture Data Ecosystem.

2. Integrated service delivery & data-driven decision-making platforms to enhance Agri Production.

3. Data-driven decision-making platforms. 

4. Digital agriculture supply chain and standardization to reduce post-harvest loss & improve the Agroprocessing industry.

5. Smart Agriculture Tech Lab to accelerate farm mechanization through homegrown agricultural equipment & technology innovation.

6. Collaboration network hub between Farm-Agriculture Extension-Research to enhance quality production.

 7. Policies addressing access to finance, market, inputs, and technologies Proposed Solutions 1. Farmer-Friendly Smart Agriculture Data Ecosystem In the last decade, the digitization of agriculture systems in Bangladesh has created a large database of public and private agriculture stakeholders bringing significant benefits to both providers and farmers but still falling short of the desired outcomes. 

• Enable public agencies to retain independence and control of their respective data silos and yet connect them with standardization and interoperability to ensure data sharing in a secure manner.

• Extend data sharing agreements with private sector data providers including but not limited to the agriculture sector to empower innovators to create value-added services in finance, marketing, logistics including cross-border.

• Incorporate big data and non-traditional data generated from different frontier technologies such as satellites, IoT, weather stations and facilitate new innovative services. 2. Integrated service delivery & data-driven decision-making platforms to enhance Agri Production Agri services will be designed according to the farmers' and decision-makers' requirement criteria emphasizing a reduction in time, cost, and a visit by the farmers, as well as dissemination of information catered for farmers' needs such as accessing inputs (seeds, fertilizer, pesticide) with their just market price and nearest availability. The primary services of the platform will be focused on the following: 

● Updated knowledge and techniques dissemination on crop productions and advanced harvesting methods

● Farmers’ co-creation and collaboration network with agriculture extension officers, researchers, and agritech innovators 

● Information related to local agriculture and inputs 

• e-Traceability for Agriculture management: E-traceability employing 4IR technology would offer simple access to resources and transform the agriculture sector by tracking the movement, location, and formalin history of the products (i.e., fruits, and vegetables). 

• e-Traceability of ruminants for smart livestock management: E-traceability employing 4IR technology would offer simple access to resources and transform the livestock sector by tracking movement, location, vaccination, and antibiotic history, and so on. Each cow will be tagged with a unique, ultra-high frequency RFID tag that registers it and its owner onto the blockchain 

• IoT based Decision making of Irrigation and Fertilizer Management: The solution proposes the use of IoTenabled handheld devices to monitor the soil condition of farming land, where a farmer can easily know the need for irrigation or fertilizer usage in his field and show recommendations accordingly. 

• Smart Food Supply Chain Processing (Vaccum Frying Machine): The proposed solution, smart vacuum frying technology, addresses the mentioned post-harvest challenges. By this method, frying will be carried out under vacuum pressure at precise temperatures and hence, product quality will be improved, nutrition loss will be minimized, the degree of fried oil deterioration will be reduced and finally processing costs will be greatly reduced, including food wastage. 

• Innovation Fund: The proposed solution aim to enable the nation to innovate faster, solve local problems, and develop people skills by supporting research and innovation through value addition and ensuring a conducive policy environment. For instance, a precision agriculture challenge competition for the innovators to design their ideas, develop prototypes, co-innovate with the farmers, and optimize returns on inputs. A group of mentors and researchers will guide the innovators in proper innovation and implementation of the technologies.