Growth in the development and use of driverless tractors, UAVs and robots in farming will fuel the agriculture technology market to see revenue reach US$74 billion in the next decade.
That’s the verdict of US market intelligence company, Tractica, which says the agricultural tech industry is only in the early stages of growth.
Tractica anticipates that the overall agricultural robot market will reach US$3 billion by the end of 2015. Healthy growth rate will then see the market reach US$16.8 billion by the end of 2020 before exploding to reach US$73.9 billion by 2024.
While opportunity abounds, the report warns reaching this level of revenue won’t be easy. Tech companies will “need a lot of innovation and clear value propositions” to reach sustainable revenue growth.
“The market is looking for more efficient solutions in terms of time, labor, and energy, rather than perfect ones,” Tractica said.
The company recommends that tech companies should look for robotic and agricultural expert panels and various user groups to “correctly analyze their timing, positioning, and value propositions.”
Currently, Tractica does not see much market competition among various players. “The competition is mainly between the large companies that want to expand their businesses to
new geographic locations and the startups that are trying to solve the same problem in the
same way.”
Tractica forecasts that worldwide shipments of agricultural robots will grow from approximately 33,000 units in 2015 to almost one million by 2024,
Tech growth is being driven by global trends in agriculture. these include population growth, strain on food supplies, labour cost and availability, shrinking farmland, climate change, the growth of indoor farming, and the automation of the agriculture industry.
The growth in the use of robotics will come from applications in seven segments according to Tractica - driverless tractors, UAVs, material management, field crops and forest management, including horticulture as well as soil, dairy and animal management.
The Tractica report focuses on market drivers and challenges, and assesses the key technology issues that will influence market development. Key and emerging industry players are profiled.
Issues identified by Tractica includes awareness about robots among growers, risks with insufficiently proven robotic solutions, unclear value propositions for technology developers, fragmented and non-collaborative development across the world, changing farm size, and the difficulty in replacing human-like dexterity.
There’s also potential issues with a lack of administrative support, regulations, policies, interest and intent, not to mention a range of issues farms themselves present - including obstacles, poor GPS signals and the mismatch of farm layouts.
