Digital Transformation for Sustainable Future - Agriculture 4.0 : A review

Abstract

In the last few years, while the COVID-19 pandemic affects food supply chains around the world, the agriculture sector also has faced many global problems, such as global warming, environmental pollution, climate change, and weather disasters. It has known that technological opportunities are available for human beings to get out of these predicaments, solving the interconnections between food-water-energy- climate nexus, and achieving agricultural transformation from traditional to digital. The aim of this review is to gain holistic solutions in a systematic view, based on water-energy-food resources to agricultural digital transformation that will play role in sustainable development. The transition from primitive to digital is given with road maps covering agricultural and industrial revolutions at four stages on timeline. Digital agriculture combined under precision agriculture and Agriculture 4.0 are handled based on domains covering monitoring, control, prediction, and logistics. Digital technologies are explained with application examples such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, decision support systems, etc. Wearable sensor technologies, real-time monitoring systems tracking whole conditions of animals in livestock, the IoT-based irrigation and fertilization systems that help enhance the efficiency of irrigation processes and minimize water and fertilizer losses in agricultural fields and greenhouses, blockchain-based electronic agriculture, and solutions based on drones and robotics that reduce herbicide and pesticide use are handled systematically. Moreover, renewable energy technologies to be provided synergy between technologies such as agrivoltaics and aquavoltaics combining food and energy production in rural are explained, besides solar-powered pivot and drip irrigation systems and environmental monitoring systems. As a result, for a sustainable future, technological innovations that increase crop productivity and improve crop quality, protect the environment, provide efficient resource use and decrease input costs can help us facing in agriculture of today overwhelm many the economic, social, and environmental challenges.