Digital agriculture practices in the context of agriculture 4.0

Abstract

Purpose-Agricultural production is under heavy pressure based upon increasing world population and significant changes in the climate. In this study, the concept of digital agriculture practices and their effects on agricultural productivity is discussed. An evaluation of current circumstance is made through the cases of Doktar Inc. and Tarla.io which are digital agriculture companies located in Turkey. Methodology-This study has utilized case method to evaluate the current circumstance of digital agriculture applications in Turkey. Since digital agriculture is an area that is still in early development stage in Turkey, case method is one of the most suitable methods. 11 openended questions and subsequent interviews sent to Doktor Inc and Tarla.io General Managers via e-mail and answers are evaluated with other collected data. Findings-Digital agriculture applications are in the early development stage in Turkey. The companies that are discussed in the paper have made meaningful progress regarding raising awareness of farmers and other involved parts of agriculture sector in Turkey. While the penetration of the two companies is currently not enough both as volume and quantity, the applications used for digital agriculture by them are parallel with the applications in developed countries. Conclusion-Digital agriculture practices in Turkey have yet to be implemented in very limited, but there are steps to be taken to acceleration. To develop digital farming in Turkey, supports of government have strategic priorities. In this context, the development of a digital agriculture action plan and supporting of this strategy with related policies and implementations, like in the EU countries and USA, will enable the expansion of agricultural production vision in Turkey. Technopolis and incubation centers of universities will be able to transform the accumulated scientific knowledge into initiatives and create a digital agriculture-focused ecosystem.

Revolution 4.0: Industry vs. Agriculture in a Future Development for SMEs

“…Agriculture 4.0, like to Industry 4.0, stands for the combined internal and external interacting of farming operations, offering digital information at all farm sectors and processes. Even in agriculture, as in the industrial sector, the 4.0 revolution represents a great opportunity to consider the variability and uncertainties that involve the agri-food production chain [48][49][50][51]. Factories become smarter, more efficient, safer, and more environmentally sustainable, due to the combination and integration of production technologies and devices, information and communication systems, data and services in network infrastructures [27,28].…”

“…The most examined suggestions derived from the field of manufacturing e.g., details of the new production methods [80][81][82][83], combination of firms, suppliers, and customers [34,84,85], logistics processes [86], lean production [87,88], qualified workers [89], and new managerial practices [90]. Among these contributions, Industry 4.0 also refers to SMEs [91] since Industry 4.0 characterizes a greater challenge due to the reduced size and SMEs are also recognized in a different cluster of studies [92], while recent articles on agriculture 4.0 dealt with digital transformation and environmental attention [47,50].…”

A Context-Aware Middleware Cloud Approach for Integrating Precision Farming Facilities into the IoT toward Agriculture 4.0

“…Beyond the actual involvement of advanced technologies, the most significant challenge of Agriculture 4.0 toward sustainable growth resides in the competency to deliver dynamically integrated PF systems that (a) enact more sophisticated and effective automated agricultural operations (such as cultivation and irrigation) at lower costs, (b) provide safer and more efficient operating conditions both for the environment and stakeholders (involving farmers, agronomist engineers, policy makers, development cooperation professionals, etc. ), and (c) increase the synergies among all stakeholders offering them the ability to make decisions even on issues that have ordinarily been outside their areas of expertise [23,36,37]. For this, a generalized concept of whole-farm management, as in [13], based on the potent cross-industry cooperation of stakeholders, infrastructures, technologies and applications is tending to be applied in accordance with the objectives of the IoT trend ( Figure 1).…”

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“… applied psychology  designing  sociology  engineering  management  mechanics Usability Engineering & Human Computer Interaction both are closely related and depend on information technology. There are huge and emerging jobs in the field of HCI and more are emerging in near future [9,16,17]. HCI is also known (or related to) as following- Man Machine Interaction  Human Centered Computing  Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) etc…”