The need to improve agricultural productivity has become critical as the world population is growing exponentially, resulting in increased global food demand, decreased agricultural land, and depletion of scarce natural resources. These factors have also necessitated the implementation of improved crop production technology.
Read Report Overview: Agriculture Drones and Robots Market
Smart agriculture is focused on detecting, analyzing, and reacting to field variability concerning crop properties with the help of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, robotics, global positioning systems (GPS), and sensors. Adopting such technologies will assist the farmers in whole-farm management practices. The potential for increased productivity while lowering environmental consequences is emphasized through the utilization of information technology.
The global agriculture drones and robots market was valued at $5.37 billion in 2021, which is expected to grow with a CAGR of 20.74% and reach $16.12 billion by 2027. Owing to the growing demand for food and grains, the growth in the global agriculture drones and robots market is expected to be driven by the increasing adoption of digital and smart agriculture equipment and technologies.
Agriculture drones and robots offer multiple benefits over conventional farming equipment, which is another factor driving the demand for these products in the agriculture industry. The adoption of agriculture drones and robots in commercial farms offers huge cost-saving opportunities. Farmers face difficulties in finding sufficient manual labor during the harvest season, especially in fruit and vegetable plantations. Agriculture drones and robots can eliminate this gap and reduce the cost of specialized manpower in such farms. Moreover, agriculture drones and robots also enable farmers to reduce the use of herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers, thus, further reducing their harmful implications on the environment.
Global Agriculture Drones and Robots Market (by Robot Application)
The growing trend for advanced technologies and agriculture drones and robot systems being used in an agricultural field, along with the increasing need for crop management and equipment and weather tracking, has led to the demand for the agriculture drones and robots market. Agriculture drones and robot systems provide data that assist farmers in accurately monitoring and optimizing crops by adapting to environmental changes.
Global Agriculture Drones and Robots Market (by Drone Application)
The major applications of agriculture drones include field mapping or monitoring (crop scouting or weed control), variable rate technology (VRT), and others (weather tracking, livestock monitoring, aerial imagery). Major applications of agriculture robots include crop monitoring, dairy farm monitoring, inventory management, harvesting and picking, and others.
Global Agriculture Drones and Robots Market (by Robot Type)
Based on product type, agriculture robots include weeding robots, milking robots, crop harvesting robots, robots-as-a-service, and others. Crop harvesting robots can detect the ripeness of fruits through computer vision and artificial intelligence. This is followed by plucking the crops from farms based on ripeness and quality. Weeding robots help weed control in farms by distinguishing weeds from desired crops and removing weeds using laser technologies. These robots eliminate the use of chemicals in crops as weeds are removed using computer vision and a couple of mechanical tools such as machine learning, a global positioning system (GPS), and artificial intelligence (AI). A milking robot is an automated milking technique for cows to drink, eat, and be milked on their own schedule. Milking robot systems give a computer-formulated diet automatically to the cows, removing the need for manual labor. The others segment includes livestock monitoring robots, spraying robots, and irrigation robots. Livestock monitoring robots use artificial intelligence to gather live data related to farm animals, including health, behavior, food and water quality, and hygiene level on farms.
Global Agriculture Drones and Robots Market (by Region)
The global agriculture drones and robots market is anticipated to witness significant growth over the forecast period in North America, Europe, the U.K., Asia-Pacific, China, South America, and Middle East and Africa. This significant growth can majorly be attributed to the increased integration of technology in the agricultural sector along with government initiatives to support the same.
The supportive government policies and the economic advantage provided by economies of scale operation have made farm consolidation a common phenomenon around the global nations, especially in developing countries.
Competitive Landscape
The global agriculture drones and robots industry represents a consolidated market in nature and is majorly dominated by the agricultural companies that take the lead by acquiring or collaborating with technology-based firms to diversify, innovate and upgrade their solutions. The companies operating in the industry have developed strong strategies in recent years to survive the competition in the fast-growing AI and IoT-integrated agriculture market. Among all the strategies, the most preferred strategy by key players has been partnerships, collaborations, joint ventures, and alliances with other firms.
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The competition is high as the companies are highly focused on launching new products and adopting different strategies to strengthen their market presence. For instance, in March 2021, DAIRYMASTER launched a new robotic drafting system called DraftNow for cows, which includes a software program and mobile app with extra functionality that allows farmers to easily sort cows remotely. In September 2020, Naio Technologies launched TED, the first robot dedicated to vineyards. It provides effective and precise mechanical weeding without using herbicides and without harming soil and crops. It consists of a universal mount that can adapt any kind of mechanical attachment, such as finger hoe weeding equipment, disc lump breakers, and serrated discs. In July 2022, Syngenta's subsidiary in India, Syngenta India, announced to launch two agricultural drones for Indian farmers. These drones are useful for spraying fungicides and insecticides. In June 2021, Parrot Drones SAS launched its new product range of drones named ANAFI Ai, which is a 4 G-enabled robotic drone. The drone comes with a special feature of detecting obstructions in its way by using 4-way cameras and avoiding these obstructions. Drones are useful in monitoring and surveying purposes of agricultural fields.
The global agriculture drones and robots market is expected to witness a high growth rate in the coming years due to growing investment in bringing automation to the agriculture industry. Furthermore, COVID-19 had a positive influence on market growth, which has led to an increase in the adoption of drones and robots in the agriculture industry.
