Farming gets smart - top 10 Agritech trends for 2022

In a fascinating new report, Vienna-based company StartUs Insights discusses the top ten agriculture trends, technologies and innovations for 2022.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, top of the list is Internet of Things, which includes devices that collect and provide real-time data for applications such as livestock tracking, soil temperature sensing and automated irrigation.

No. 2 on the list is Agricultural Robotics. From fruit-picking, harvesting, planting and weeding, to self-steering tractors, robotics is set to deal with labour shortages and to automate repetitive operations.

In third place is Artificial Intelligence - algorithms that automate disease or pest recognition, for example, or which determine crop quality and quantity.

Fourth in the top 10 are Drones, used for aerial imaging, data collection and even aerial pollination.

At No. 5 is Precision Agriculture, or site-specific crop management, in which farmers use exactly the right amounts of water, fertilizer, pesticide etc. for a specific tract of land.

Next is Agricultural Biotechnology, covering a range of techniques from CRISPR-Cas9 to biopesticides.

No. 7 is Big Data - analytics enabling (for example) crop forecasts and visualization of crop health and size.

In 8th place comes Controlled Environment Agriculture: vertical farming, hydroponics and aeroponics, for example.

Next we have Regenerative Agriculture, which focuses on improving topsoil revival and biodiversity. For example, planting cover crops between seasons helps cover the soil and restores fertility.

Last but not least at No. 10 is Connectivity Technology, covering technologies such as 5g, rural broadband and satellite. Connectivity supports other applications, such as IoT and Big Data.

StartUs have produced this tree map, which visually demonstrates the impact of these Top 10 technologies, and also serves to highlight the range and diversity of current innovation in the Agritech space.

The report is based upon analysis of a sample of 5,290 global startups and scaleups, and is available to download in full from the StartUs website.