Opportunities and Challenges for Big Data in Agricultural and Environmental Analysis

TLDR

Digital agriculture is advancing through inexpensive data collection from soil, livestock, crops, weather, drones, and satellites, promising higher yields on less land and lower environmental impact, but challenges remain in aggregating and interpreting data for decision support and farmer training. This article reviews the literature on the promise and barriers of Big Data to transform agriculture. The review synthesizes studies on Big Data applications, evaluating opportunities and obstacles for agricultural decision‑making.

Abstract

Agriculture stands on the cusp of a digital revolution, and the same technologies that created the Internet and are transforming medicine are now being applied in our farms and on our fields. Overall, this digital agricultural revolution is being driven by the low cost of collecting data on everything from soil conditions to animal health and crop development along with weather station data and data collected by drones and satellites. The promise of these technologies is more food, produced on less land, with fewer inputs and a smaller environmental footprint. At present, however, barriers to realizing this potential include a lack of ability to aggregate and interpret data in such a way that it results in useful decision support tools for farmers and the need to train farmers in how to use new tools. This article reviews the state of the literature on the promise and barriers to realizing the potential for Big Data to revolutionize agriculture.