Our team and even our investors can see the sparkle on my face when I talk about engineering. Our co-founder Shailendra would definitely agree with this. Because I see him sparkle when he talks about building a product. Both of us now talk more about investment, strategy, and core business components but deep down we both love to engineer and build the product.

Fasal in all sense has a very strong foundation, be it a product foundation or technological foundation. I am here to talk more about technical stuff.

When we started Fasal, we had a few things in our minds that we wanted to achieve —

1. A small and high-performance team
2. Self-driven and motivated team
3. De-coupled and Cohesive system design
4. Single codebase for all platforms
5. We can be DevOps
6. We can be QA
7. Zero downtime, rolling upgrade, and auto-scale
8. No one wants to wait for the next app release, so hot code push for apps but no crashes, please!
9. Self-log, self-monitor, self-heal
10. Peace of mind

Before going deep into each point mentioned above, let me discuss a few various systems at Fasal. Core to its technology Fasal is an IoT and AI platform. We have -

• A sensor node that connects with an array of sensors records data at every configured interval, creates a data frame, and pushes it to the Fasal backend server on a 4G/3G/GPRS network. The node is solar-powered, supports deep sleep mode, and can be programmed over the air (OTA).
• A linearly scalable container-based IoT backend server is always available. Processes the data frame and stores it on Fasal's highly available and replicated storage servers.
• An app backend and frontend. A single codebase for web-app and all mobile apps. The app backend talks to the Fasal storage server to pull data and run algorithms. The app frontend presents data to users on the Web, iOS, and Android.
• AI engine periodically loads data from n different sources, trains the ML algorithms, deploys the model, and gives an endpoint for prediction.

The interesting bit is — all the above is developed and managed by 2 and a half engineers at Fasal and you will hardly see us working on weekends. I am the half engineer here :).

We always want to remain a small and high-performance team. And saying that doesn’t mean that we want to work late in the night or call engineers at midnight to troubleshoot customer issues. We strictly want to balance work-life. We have actually achieved that and we will keep following that practice always. Fasal is built in a way that it never goes down or till date, it has not gone down. I will share some stats for this claim.

Our IoT backend server is written in Java using SpringBoot and deployed on AWS Fargate using Containers. Under high load, it auto-scales and balances the incoming traffic in a rolling fashion without losing a single request. If a running instance is about to crash it launches another instance in no time and re-directs all the traffic to the new node. When we deploy a new version, it performs a rolling upgrade by first moving all the traffic to the new version, doing all the checks, and bringing down the old nodes.

The last time we deployed our IoT backend was sometime in Feb 2018. We never looked back or got any midnight alerts. It auto-heals itself whenever needed without bothering us.

We always want our team members to be self-driven and self-motivated. Our brilliant engineers Dhaval and Shivang work on their own. I and my co-founder are mostly busy talking to investors and partners these days, and hardly get time to sit in the office but that doesn’t stop our engineering pace. Dhaval and Shivang have taken that responsibility they do planning and execution by themselves and we push code daily and make at least 3–4 releases every week.

When you design a system that is de-coupled, you have greater flexibility to make a change in small parts without affecting others but it also opens more chances of bugs, more connection points, and also the management overhead. We at Fasal have taken a strategic step in building all our systems to be de-coupled and highly cohesive but leave fewer open points for issues and management. Our app server is written completely in Node.js and Meteor framework. We have extensively used Meteor DDP for pushing real-time updates to our apps which also makes our app more responsive in nature.

Node.js and Meteor have provided us with a great language and framework combination where a single code base has allowed us to build our web app, iOS, and Android app in a single day without any hassle. We are a fan of containers and our app server is also deployed in containers in the same fashion as our IoT backend server which just takes care of itself without bothering us at all. Again never went down from the time it is life.

As I told you earlier, we do 3–4 releases a week which go to production instantly and also to all our customers without them updating their app. We don’t even publish a new app. We publish the app once a month or even longer. It seems like real magic and the best part of our deployment process. It’s called hot code push. Another brilliant feature by Meteor allows you to push new code to all the apps in a blink without the end-user noticing it. And you may ask why we do that and why it is extremely important for us? Because we deal with the customer (farmers) located in remote places with slow internet connectivity. We want to deliver new features but updating the app every time is not gonna work. So we decided to do a hot code push. Happy customers!

Managing web apps, Android and iOS looks very challenging. You have to take care of versioning, devices, and crashes. Fortunately, Fasal has not crashed yet, not on a single device in the last 6 months. I am very proud of that. And we don’t want to crash ever. That’s a big commitment but we are all in to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Crop is growing, We are coding

That is all we have done in the last 6 months. Two and a half engineers and an awesome team. We are also committed to giving back to Open Source and you can see some of our current work under our Git Repo. This is just a start. There are many more things we want to open source and we will do it as we move forward and with the commitment to manage it always.

Fasal

Our recent contribution includes a Mongo-backed API rate limiter which Dhaval has been working on for some time now. It was a demanding feature request from many in the community. He has finally filed a PR yesterday and it is life now. We have used it in Fasal and it works really well.

Another upcoming PR is from Shivang. He has modified Cordova to support actions in the mobile notification. We will be pushing it very soon. He is still documenting it.

We are also opening our APIs. Right now for internal partners who are building excellent service for farmers. We have already opened a few and that is where Dhaval has created a Mongo-backed API rate limiter on express.

From the first day, we had decided to be a software company, focused on AI and predictions. But hardware is an integral part of our solution and most of our competitors are building really cool IoT devices for agriculture. We see them as our collaborators in the future. But to adhere to the market demand we have also started assembling and building our own hardware. Our sole aim is to make hardware a commodity so a larger farming community can be benefitted from the Fasal solution.

We are very soon publishing our first research paper on Micro-Climate prediction. I am trying to buy some time from my regular work to focus on writing it. We are also hiring active AI engineers and Plant pathologists. Do send your CV to connect@wolkus.com.

I am more active on Twitter — https://twitter.com/anandaverma20

We are coding, Crop is growing. Engineering@Fasal was originally published in Fasal Engineering on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If crops are not stressed by other environmental factors like soil moisture, the development rate from transplantation (TP) to maturity for many crops depends upon the daily air temperature. Because many developmental events of plants and insects depend on the accumulation of specific quantities of heat, it is possible to predict when these events should occur during a growing season regardless of differences in temperatures from year to year.

In Phenology, measuring plant growth by daily heat accumulation is known as Growing Degree Days, Growing Degree Units or GDD. It is a reliable method of predicting crop and insect development than calendar days. Differing threshold temperatures and beginning accumulation dates are used to determine accumulated heat units for different crops.

Phenology is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and inter-annual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors — Wikipedia

Since every crop requires a certain amount of heat accumulation (GDD) to reach to maturity, it becomes extremely important to understand the GDD requirement of the crop with respect to the weather forecast. If the weather is going to be cloudy for a longer duration, the crop will not be able to accumulate enough heat and its maturity will get delayed.

GDD is also a good indicator of which crops should be grown in which season at a particular location. It helps grower plan their strategies accordingly.

Use this Growing Degree Days Calculator to calculate growing degree days (GDD) to predict crop development stages, plan planting schedules, and optimize harvest timing based on accumulated heat units.

Growing Degree Days Calculator

Fasal GPI (Growth Progress Indicator)

Fasal’s Growth Progress Indicator (GPI) is built on top of Growing Degree Day (GDD) which not only calculate accumulated GDDs based on real-time farm data but also with the power of Fasal μClimate, it makes GDD prediction for next 10 days which helps the farmer plan their week ahead of time.

Grow More, Grow Better with Fasal.

Also, read —

Why Fasal built its own AI based weather forecast system (Fasal μClimate)—

Introducing Fasal Growth Progress Indicator (Fasal GPI): Because Growers Wants to Plan Their Week was originally published in Fasal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Two important factors which determines winegrape quality are Brix and Berry size. If you’ve ever glanced at a wine bottle tech sheet then you’ve probably come across the words “Brix” with a number after it, such as 19.5, 23 or sometimes up to 26.

Brix (°Bx) is a way to measure the potential alcohol content of a wine before it’s made by determining the sugar level in grapes. Each gram of sugar that’s fermented will turn into about a 1/2 gram of alcohol.

Grapevines are often cultivated under mild water stress, caused by particular pedo-climate conditions (rainfall timing or available soil water in the root zone). When a grapevine goes into water stress one of its first functions is to reduce the growth of new plant shoots which compete with the grape clusters for nutrients and resources.

The lack of water also keeps the individual grape berries down to a smaller size which increase its skin to juice ratio. As the skin is filled with color phenols, tannin and aroma compounds, the increase in skin-to-juice ratio is desirable for the potential added complexity the wine may have.

The amount of water that reaches the root system and the time for which the vine is “stressed” determine the amount of soluble solids and acidity which ultimately affects the taste of the wine.

To manage such conditions with the intention to achieve optimal water in order to enhance quality, understanding soil moisture or water stress at root zone is very very important.

Also read —

Evapotranspiration: Understanding and Predicting Plant Water Requirement

With the help of Fasal, winemakers are now able to monitor and manage water stress level at the primary and the secondary root zone and controlling the Berry size and Brix (°Bx) to enhance the wine quality. Fasal is bringing joy in vine making :).

Use this extensive Crop Water Requirement Calculator to estimate daily evapotranspiration, seasonal water needs, and irrigation schedules using FAO Penman-Monteith method for any crop and climate.

Soil Moisture Vs Wine Quality: How Fasal is bringing joy in winemaking was originally published in Fasal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is the combined processes of evaporation of water from the soil surface and plant surfaces and transpiration of water through the plant tissues.

The overall amount of ET for a crop or landscape over an entire growing season is about the same as the seasonal water requirement. So it is a direct measure of, how much irrigation farmers need to do to maintain required water stress level for the plant.

But in some crops like grapevine, maintaining irrigation below ET demand - is used to accelerate fruit development and improve quality by controlling sugar (brix), berry size and color.

How does ET occur?

The majority of the seasonal ET happens from transpiration. Transpiration losses are usually high and are directly linked to plant growth and productivity. This is because the pathway for transpiration in plants is the same one that allows for plant intake of carbon dioxide. Both exchange processes occur through pores called stomates on the leaf surface. Stomates are fully open when plants receive enough water through the soil and when both transpiration and photosynthesis are occurring at maximum rates. The inability to satisfy the need to ET can leads to reduced photosynthesis in crops, wilting, slow rates of fruit growth, indicates potential root pathogens in many crops, and also leads to increased incidence of insect damage owing to reduced health.

How is ET Estimated?

Most of the present day work on Evapotranspiration is based on Howard Penman’s paper titled “Natural Evaporation from Open Water, Bare Soil and Grass” published in 1948 by Royal Society.

Penman derived the fundamental physics of evaporation, which is driven by energy arriving by the sun and sky, along with the temperature and humidity of the air. Penman’s complicated formula just says what is intuitively true: if it’s sunny and warm, there is more evaporation. If it’s humid out, it’s hard to evaporate to cool off.

The most important factors needed to estimate ET are: 1) the local weather conditions and 2) the cropping system for which estimates are needed (type of crop, planting date, crop development).

Local weather conditions are important because ET is driven by weather factors that determine the drying power of the air. We can accurately predict ET losses in a given area from the measurements of four local weather variables:

1. solar radiation
2. temperature
3. humidity
4. wind

The data from these measurements are then plugged into equations that accurately predict the daily rate of ET for those conditions. These values are called reference ET and refer to the ETo of the reference crop.

An important point to note here is ETo is a “reference ET”, to estimate the water use of a well-watered grass field under a set of local weather conditions. ETo expresses the evaporating power of the atmosphere at a specific location and time of the year and does not consider the crop characteristics and soil factors.

On the other hand crop evapotranspiration(ETc) is the evapotranspiration from disease-free, well-fertilized crops, grown in large fields, under optimum soil water conditions, and achieving full production under the given climatic conditions.

Crop evapotranspiration can be calculated from climatic data and by integrating directly the crop resistance, albedo and air resistance factors in the Penman approach. As there is still a considerable lack of information for different crops, the Penman method is used for the estimation of the standard reference crop to determine its evapotranspiration rate, i.e., ETo. Experimentally determined ratios of ETc/ETo, called crop coefficients (Kc), are used to relate ETc to ETo or ETc = Kc x ETo.

Differences in leaf anatomy, stomatal characteristics, aerodynamic properties and even albedo cause the crop evapotranspiration to differ from the reference crop evapotranspiration under the same climatic conditions. Due to variations in the crop characteristics throughout its growing season, Kc for a given crop changes from sowing till harvest.

You can use this Evapotranspiration Calculator (ETo/ETc) calculator to quickly calculate ETo using FAO Penman-Monteith, Hargreaves, or Blaney-Criddle methods. It gives ETc for 27+ crops with Kc coefficients by growth stage.

Evapotranspiration Calculator (ETo/ETc)

Fasal ET

Fasal ET is ETo and derived from Penman’s equation which was originally introduced by the pioneers Howard Penman and John Monteith and adapted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and American Society of Civil Engineers.

We not only calculate ETo based on real-time farm data but also with the power of Fasal μClimate, we make ETo predictions which helps the farmer plan their irrigations schedule in much advance and much accurate to meet optimal plant growth.

Why Fasal built its own AI based weather forecast system (Fasal μClimate)—

Crop is growing, we are coding. Stay tuned for our engineering tale :)

Grow More, Grow Better with Fasal.

Evapotranspiration: Understanding and Predicting Plant Water Requirement was originally published in Fasal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Let me ask a question — how many times it happened that you saw on your weather app that weather will be clear in the evening but it actually rains. For you, it might be okay, you didn’t bring umbrella and you are going to get wet. But for a farmer, it may have devastating consequences. Farmers plan their day based on weather forecast. If I, as a farmer have scheduled spray in the afternoon for my 10 acre land because I saw in the morning that weather will be clear but it actually rains at 4 O’clock. I lost the spray and the money. It went down the drain with the rain.

Not only above, but changes in the weather greatly affect growth, state and potential crop yield, the disease pressure, the irrigation scheduling and fertilisers scheduling. Not only plants, but also the demand and supply for the yield depends profoundly on weather conditions. Directly and indirectly, weather is the culprit for the loss of the annual world crop. Even if you just consider the United States, they lost close to $700 B in crop production in 90+ weather related events. That’s mammoth.

Accurate weather forecast are also important for forecasting the spread of fungal pathogens that are carried on the wind. This can allow for preventive measures of crops to avoid massive losses.

Let’s just take the example of Downey mildew in grapes. Managing downey requires thousands of dollars in a relatively average size of vineyard. But, the fact of the matter that Downey can be forecasted if you have correct forecast for the vineyard in reference itself. You save money, you improve the quality and you save effort, simply put.

Now the question arises — when agriculture productivity depends highly on weather conditions, then why the existing weather forecast systems are not perfect? Answer to that question is — farmers rely on weather forecast provided by meteorological department or universities or some weather app. These channels use weather station that sits at an airport, over a tarmac, or 50 Kms away from the actual farm location.

Atmospheric conditions of farm differ vastly from those in the larger areas. We call that microclimate of the farm. To simply put, the temperature in your field is different than you garden, different than the city, different than another farm which is 10 kms away from it, different than the field which has a large canopy and different than the field which just has grass…And I will keep repeating this unless you understand how significant this is.

Getting the accurate microclimate around the crop canopy allows farmers to potentially minimize disease and pest incidence, effectively manage crop growth, optimise resource and plan optimal harvest time.

To help farmers achieve this Fasal has built its own micro-climate weather forecast model. Fasal’s microclimate forecasts are tailored to each farm location and are performed at a point scale, not at a kilometer-wide spatial scale. In essence, as Fasal collects more data, our AI based microclimate forecasting algorithm incorporates real in-field information and relates it to publicly available weather forecasts, so farmers get real-time, actionable information relevant to day-to-day operations at their specific farm.

Also read —

Fasal Impact Stories

Grow More, Grow Better with Fasal.

Why Fasal built its own AI based weather forecast system (Fasal μClimate)— was originally published in Fasal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the largest vineyards of India, Grover Zampa, has improved the quality of wine grapes by maintaining required water stress level in soil at the primary and secondary root zone.

One of the influential vegetable farmer and horticulture consultant Mr. Bhupendra from Durg city came to know that he has been irrigating excessively on his farm where water is a scarcity. He is now saving 50% on irrigation cost (water, electricity, motor wear-tear, labor, time etc.). He is also able to maintain a specific water tension in the soil so that the crops can intake maximum of fertilizers. He was also successful in saving his bottle gourd crop from Powdery Mildew disease by taking preventive spray much before it actually harms the crop by the disease prediction feature of Fasal.

Another farmer growing eggplant did not believe the night temperature in his farm goes as below as 3 degree celsius, Eggplant ceases to grow in this condition.

Another farmer from Raipur, now knows that his land is not suitable for growing cucurbit because of soil temperature needs and he doesn’t waste time and money on cucurbit anymore and grows other crops.

We are overwhelmed with the responses and queries we have received so far and we are on a mission to make sure Fasal reaches to every farmer of this nation and beyond.

Grow More, Grow Better with Fasal.

Fasal Impact Stories was originally published in Fasal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Founding Fasal is not a milestone or a moment in our lives, It’s an emotion which has started flowing within us, touching many hearts and creating many stories along the way.

Fasal has come out as result of merger between minds of Engineers (literally and otherwise) and incredible, vast and untapped experience of the farmers with a mission to — Increase and improve the quality of per acre yield.

When someone asks me about Fasal and what it does, I try to explain it in words or try to give a simpler definition but truly it is much more than that. Let me a take different approach here to introduce Fasal to you -

We all do take very good care of our bodies. Don’t we?
If we fall sick or feel down, we immediately go meet our doctor. Doctor listens to us, observes us, uses his stethoscope, writes some lab tests, if needed, and finally after seeing all the results, writes a prescription for us. And we believe in them, take prescription and we get well.

Do you ever believe a doctor who doesn’t have a stethoscope at all? Who does not make observations keenly? Who does not hears all the symptoms intently?

Would you trust the doctors if they gave prescription without careful observation, without primary investigation, without checking the rudimentary vitals?

I won’t certainly! We are very cautious about our body and if needed we take multiple opinions from various doctors before following any prescription or procedure.

Now consider this and think about plants. They are living beings too. They get sick and suffer from disease. Who is the doctor?

Farmers take care of crops, they know when to sow, when to prune, when is the right time to irrigate. If you are a grower, you are both the mother and the doctor of your crop. But do you make decisions by observing data or do you take guesswork based decisions? If your doctor does guesswork prescription, will you ever go to them?

So what growers need is — an excellent stethoscope which provides them the data and observations to make informed decision about their crop and take guesswork out of farming. Thats exactly what Fasal does.

Fasal enables farmers in becoming better mothers and doctors of their crops. Fasal adds value to your farming practises by giving you data and analytics (read the ‘tests’, will you?). Fasal enables farmers utilise their knowledge and practises better.

If you are a farmers, Fasal can help you in deciding when to irrigate and how much will be the best amount to irrigate with. It helps you save water, electricity, motor wear tear and also helps you maintain a good health of your crop.

Fasal helps you plan your sowing and harvesting time so you could take maximum advantage of climatic conditions. Fasal tells you if there is possibility of disease outbreak, so you can take preventive actions and save your land for excessive use of harmful chemicals and your crop from disease.

And all the information is available to you at any time and on any device. You as a grower can spend more time with your family, you don’t need to wake up during long nights to watch for your farm when Fasal is there watching your farm 24x7.

Fasal helps you Grow Smart and Grow More.

Sharing few stories Fasal has created so far -

A short testimony — how Fasal is impacting lives of growers in its own humble ways —

Introducing Fasal was originally published in Fasal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Various initiatives are taken to transform India into a digital India and Agriculture is not left behind.

Technology Revolution in India is already catching on with increasing government and venture capital investments pouring into supporting startups working on real-use cases addressing unique challenges like traffic management, surveillance and safety, smart homes in urban settings and so on.

There is also a growing opportunity in the agriculture sector that stands to improve lives, make India a true leader in Climate-Smart Agriculture and revolutionize the way farmers plant, fertilize and harvest crops.

India is an agrarian economy with agriculture supporting 60% of our population. Indian agriculture is highly dependent on human labour and good rainfall. While most developed economies have mechanised farming and reduced dependency on rains through state interventions and good planning, Indian farmers still plod along with obsolete farming techniques to support a growing population. Yet the contribution of this major sector to GDP has been steadily declining and currently stands at 15%. This stagnant state of affairs has triggered action from entrepreneurs and startups who are introducing technology to farming in new ways.

The major Indian agri-tech startups can be categorised into -

Agri Market Place: Starups in this category provide price alerts, agricultural news, government mandi prices with information available in local languages as well. These startups also connects farmers to sellers and facilitates price discovery through discussion.

Digital Farm Management: Another category of startups primarily focusing on farm digitisation. They encourage farmers to manage their farms more prudently and profitably. Using cutting edge technology like big data, geospatial analytics, Data Analytics and Machine Learning. They tend to provide farmers with an overview of their entire operations from production, pest control, inventory management and tracking.

Climate-Smart Precision Farming: The third category of startups helps growers in making data-driven farming decision and taking guess work out of farming. These startups are using on-farm sensing technology to records various soil, environment and crop parameters and uses artificial intelligence and data science to make on-farm predictions.

Some of the major benefits we can get from Climate-Smart precision farming are -
* Costs savings in terms of water, energy, fertilizers, and pesticides.
* Product losses prevention by controlling weather conditions to adequate harvest times. Optimizing farmers daily tasks by automating processes.
* Getting real-time alerts about crop’s conditions to make adjustments to reach optimal growth conditions.

Adoption of Internet and Mobile technologies and enabling collaboration have definitely enabled newer opportunities and bringing in talented workforce and gaining government support are major milestones to cross for this sector.

And In 2017, there were various initiatives launched by Govt. Of India and some of them are —

India Israel Innovation Bridge

Earlier in July this year, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel, among other agreements, the two countries also two countries also launched a bilateral innovation challenge for startups in Israel and India.

The India Israel Innovation Bridge is a tech platform to facilitate bilateral cooperation between Indian and Israeli startups, tech hubs, corporations and other key innovation ecosystem players.

Agriculture Grand Challenge

A unique opportunity for Agri-tech startups with a commercially viable solution to solve for innovative challenges in the sector. Ministry of Agriculture, Govt. of India is looking for new concepts & innovations in 12 different areas. The objective is to support the technology base by funding the best fundamental concepts while helping talented and creative innovations to pursue promising avenues at the frontier of the technology. It will provide startups with access to priority infrastructure, and make Agriculture an attractive sector for the country’s best brains.

Themes for the challenge:

1. Simplified Soil Testing Methods
2. Assaying and Grading Solution
3. Development of E-marketplace
4. Price Forecasting During Sowing
5. Last Mile Information Dissemination
6. Yield Estimation
7. Sorting and Grading of Produce
8. Adulteration Testing
9. Custom Hiring Centers
10. Crop Residue Disposal
11. Prevent pre-harvest and post-harvest losses
12. Enhancing Agricultural Productivity

About Fasal: Fasal is an AI powered IoT platform for Agriculture ecosystem that records a variety of growing conditions on the farm. It then uses artificial intelligence and data science to make on-farm predictions, before delivering the insights that matter into your hand. With its subscription-based model, Fasal aims to cut down the costs for farmers and provide them real-time alerts about crop’s conditions. Moreover, predictive models and optimization of daily tasks, it gives the farmers a complete control over their future harvest.

Digitizing and Speeding Up Agriculture Development In India was originally published in Fasal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Today, according to the most recent estimate by the UN, there are 7.3 billion people — and we may reach 9.7 billion by 2050. Nearly all of this population increase will occur in developing countries. Urbanization will continue at an accelerated pace, and about 70 percent of the world’s population will be urban (compared to 49 percent today). Income levels will be many multiples of what they are now. In order to feed this larger, more urban and richer population, food production (net of food used for biofuels) must increase by 70 percent. Annual cereal production will need to rise to about 3 billion tonnes from 2.1 billion today and annual meat production will need to rise by over 200 million tonnes to reach 470 million tonnes.

This is shaping agriculture market in a way we had not seen before. It has become the immediate requirement for the farmers to increase crop production, either by increasing amount of agricultural land to grow crops or by enhancing crop yield on existing agricultural land through climate smart and precision farming techniques. However, the ecological and social trade-offs of clearing more land for agriculture are often high, particularly in the tropics. In fact, the agricultural land is decreasing every year. Farmers are left with the later option to increases crop productivity on existing agricultural land.

Farmers must grow more on the land they currently operate through what is called “sustainable intensification.” This means using precision farming tools, such as GPS fertilizer dispersion, advanced irrigation systems, environmentally optimized crop rotations and climate-smart farming. These methods can help produce more crops. They can also reduce the negative environmental impacts from over-stressing resources–preventing groundwater depletion and the destruction of fertile lands through over-use of fertilizer.

World agriculture has been able to meet the rapidly growing global demand for food, feed and fiber over the last half-century at real agricultural prices that were falling for much of the time, at least until the mid-80s. This was only possible due to sizeable agricultural productivity growth. However, in recent years, yield growth rates have slowed down notably in many countries and for major commodities. In particular, the growth rates of cereal yields have been falling since the Green Revolution years. It dropped from 3.2 percent per year in 1960 to 1.5 percent in 2000.

The suite of technological options should be as broad as possible, ranging from new plant varieties and animal breeds better adapted to changing conditions; to farming systems with improved water- and labor-saving technologies; reduction of losses and waste; and natural resource management. Technological advances are particularly needed in the staple crop sector. Preference should be given to technologies promising win-win combinations of enhancing productivity and sustainability managing natural resources, for example, conservation farming approaches based on no-tillage.

The agricultural sector also needs significant long-term private investment and public spending. Many large institutional investors, including pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, have already made major commitments to support global agricultural production and trading in recent years — not least because agricultural (land) investments have historically delivered strong returns, increased diversification, and outpaced inflation.

Numerous studies have shown that investment in agricultural research and development (R&D) can generate extraordinary high rates of return. Nevertheless, under-investment in agricultural R&D in many developing countries has continued. Total global investment in agricultural R&D totaled USD 41 billion in the year 2000. The public sector accounted for 59 percent and the private sector 41 percent. Most private sector research was carried out in developed countries and tended to be focused on the requirements of commercial farmers in well-developed regions. Public sector R&D still dominates in developing countries and is more focused on basic research and the improvement of staple food and minor crops. Public investments in agricultural R&D worldwide grew from USD 16 billion in 1981 to USD 23 billion in 2000. There were large differences between and within regions: While public investments in the Asia-Pacific (driven by China and India) region more than doubled over this period, investments sub-Saharan Africa only grew at an annual average of 0.6 percent from 1981 to 2000 and actually fell during the 1990s. Agricultural R&D investments are increasingly concentrated in a few leading countries in each region.

Global policy makers, corporations, and consumers must put the global food balance higher up the agenda. International business leaders who are participating in this supply chain have to better communicate the need for policy changes and for developed countries to incentivize investment in regions where there is the most potential for growth. Our food security will depend on it.

About Fasal: It is an AI powered IoT platform for Agriculture ecosystem that records a variety of growing conditions on the farm. It then uses artificial intelligence and data science to make on-farm predictions, before delivering the insights that matter into your hand. With its subscription-based model, Fasal aims to cut down the costs for farmers and provide them real-time alerts about crop’s conditions. Moreover, predictive models and optimization of daily tasks, it gives the farmers a complete control over their future harvest.

Global Demand for Food Is Rising. Is Technology Powered Sustainable Farming the Answer? was originally published in Fasal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.