15 Emerging Agriculture Technologies That Will Change The World

15 Emerging Agriculture Technologies That Will Change The World

12 May 2014

This article, published on Business Insider Australia, summarises the emerging agriculture technologies as outlined in a joint report by Polizy Horizons Canada and Mike Zappa of Envisioning.  The report is titled 'MetaScan 3: Emerging Technologies'.

Below are technologies related to agricultural and natural manufacturing under four key areas of accelerating change: Sensors, Food, Automation and Engineering.

Sensors help agriculture by enabling real-time traceability and diagnosis of crop, livestock and farm machine states.

Food may benefit directly from genetic tailoring and potentially from producing meat directly in a lab.

Automation will help agriculture via large-scale robotic and microrobots to check and maintain crops at the plant level.

Engineering involves technologies that extend the reach of agriculture to new means, new places and new areas of the economy. Of particular interest will be synthetic biology, which allows efficiently reprogramming unicellular life to make fuels, byproducts accessible from organic chemistry and smart devices.

We have included predictions based on consultation with experts of when each technology will be scientifically viable (the kind of stuff that Google, governments, and universities develop), mainstream (when VCs and startups widely invest in it), and financially viable (when the technology is generally available on Kickstarter).

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Article source: Business Insider Australia -