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Policy Horizons Canada worked with futurist and data visualizer Michell Zappa of Envisioning to produce a report called MetaScan 3: Emerging Technologies and accompanying infographics. We are reproducing the summary for emerging agriculture 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, governmen! ts, and universities develop), mainstream (when VCs and startups widely invest in it), and financially viable (when the technology is generally available on Kickstarter).
Sensors
Air & soil sensors: Fundamental additions to the automated farm, these sensors would enable a real time understanding of current farm, forest or body of water conditions.
Scientifically viable in 2013; mainstream and financially viable in 2015.
Equipment telematics: Allows mechanical devices such as tractors to warn mechanics that a failure is likely to occur soon. Intra-tractor communication can be used as a rudimentary "farm swarm" platform.
Scientifically viable in 2013; mainstream in 2016; and financially viable in 2017.
Livestock biometrics: Collars with GPS, RFID and biometrics can automatically identify and relay vital information about the livestock in real time.
Scientifically viable in 2017; mainstream and financially viable in 2020.
Crop sensors: Instead of prescribing field fertilization before application, high-resolution crop sensors inform application equipment of correct amounts needed. Optical sensors or drones are able to identify crop health across the field (for example, by using infra-red light).
Scientifically viable in 2015; mainstream in 2018; and financially viable in 2019.
Infrastructural health sensors: Can be used for monitoring vibrations and material conditions in buildings, bridges, factories, farms and other infrastructure. Coupled with an intelligent network, such sensors could feed crucial information back to maintenance crews or robots.
Scientifically viable in 2021; mainstream in 2025; and financially viable in 2027.
Food
Genetically designed food: The creation of entirely new strains of food animals and plants in order to better address biological and physiological needs. A departure from genetically modified food, genetically designed food would be engineered from the ground up.
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