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Received: 5 December 2019    Accepted: 15 May 2020

DOI: 10.1111/jac.12414

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Editorial: Smallholder targeted Agriculture 4.0 in temperature

limited cropping systems

Marc Cotter  | Folkard Asch
Institute of Agricultural Sciences in the Tropics (Hans Ruthenberg Institut), University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

Correspondence:
Marc Cotter, Institute of Agricultural Sciences in the Tropics (Hans Ruthenberg Institut), University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany.
Email: marc.cotter@uni-hohenheim.de

Funding information
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Grant/Award Number: 407054468; Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung, Grant/
Award Number: 14.1432.5-001.00

1 |  I NTRO D U C TI O N
African and Asian food production relies to 70% (of calories provided)
on smallholder production systems (Fanzo, 2017). More than 475 mil-
lion small farms produce food often under marginal conditions, with lit-
tle input or market access (Lowder, Skoet, & Raney, 2016). The need to
satisfy an ever-growing demand for food production, especially under
the reality of climate change, poses new challenges and opportunities
to smallholder farmers worldwide. On one hand, marginal lands are
being increasingly brought into production, on the other hand, better
market opportunities promote diversification of production systems.
Non-traditional crops and varieties are being introduced to existing sys-
tems, challenging farmers´ knowledge and experience in handling these
new opportunities, as well as the resource base. Cropping calendars
need to be adapted or newly developed to include these newcomers
and research is needed to understand how they react to the environ-
mental factors of these surroundings. Climate change poses additional
risks from both increasingly erratic rainfall patterns and rising tempera-
tures as well as from newly emerging biotic stressors. Droughts and
heavy rains are very likely to increase in frequency in large parts of
the world (Olesen et al., 2011), resulting in a need for extended scope
of and improved access to state of the art and timely weather fore-
casts also for smallholder farmers, especially in the developing world.
But climate change-related adaptation and mitigation measures do also
offer new possibilities to (sustainably) intensify agricultural production
particularly in temperature limited environments such as high altitudes
or seasonally hot regions (van Oort & Zwart, 2018).
Adaptable solutions are needed to maintain and improve yields and
farmers’ livelihoods in these systems. National Extension and Agricultural
Research Services are working together with international agricultural
research organizations, such as CGIAR Centers and Universities, on a
vast variety of related topics, challenges and solutions. This special issue
aims at putting a spotlight on some of these approaches.
Often, Agriculture 4.0 is associated with high-tech solutions for the
automatization of agricultural activities, ranging from precision farming
approaches, sensor technology, self-driving machinery to the use of
drones. All of these technologies can be found in the agricultural sec-
tors of developing countries, albeit to a much smaller degree than in the
global north. Mobile and smartphone technology and related apps are
well established in developing countries. For more than a decade, this
technology has supported money transfer in structurally less developed
regions of the world and has helped communicate, for example weather
forecasts, along the value chain from smallholder farmers to merchants
and entrepreneurs to trading hubs. More and more apps are being de-
veloped that service this line of activities: certification along a products
life cycle, from seed to manufactured good, or the teaming of buyers
and sellers in rural environments. ICRISATs iHub, as an example, aims at
supporting exactly this, by bringing together agricultural entrepreneurs,
scientists, and technology experts (ICRISAT Innovation Hub,  2019).
Especially when focusing on smallholder targeted approaches, the in-
vestment needed for an extensive machine outfit is causing farmers to
look for other solutions. “Hello Tractor” is an app supporting agricultural
mechanization in Africa by linking equipment owners (such as tractors)
to equipment users and thus creating a network among smallholder
farmers via the app (Hello Tractor, 2019). Crop production system de-
pends on crop productivity and good management. The app Rice Advice
from the Africa Rice Center aims at delivering decision support to rice
farmers and extension personnel in Africa, based on farmers input on

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© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science published by Blackwell Verlag GmbH.

J Agro Crop Sci. 2020;206:421–422.  |

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422       COTTER and ASCH
crop varieties, the availability of input and investment resources, labour
and the location of the farmer´s fields (Rice Advice, 2019; Saito, Diack,
Dieng, & Ndiaye, 2015). Changes to the original set-up due to fluctuating
fertilizer prices, erratic weather patterns or disturbances in water supply
can be accounted for on time, and the recommendations to farmers can
be adapted considering the latest developments. Similar, server-based
growth models can improve their performance by having access to the
latest regional weather forecasts, allowing not just to suggest optimal
cropping calendars to the farmers, but also to adjust crop management
strategies such as fertilizer application and weed management.
In order to support this kind of app-based extension approaches,
the models behind have to be calibrated and validated using a wide
range of input data. This is especially the case when even well-known
varieties of staple crops such as rice are being introduced to new en-
vironments, for example irrigated paddy rice to the highlands of East
Africa. How do these varieties respond to the thermal characteristics
(cold or hot spells, Abera et al., 2020, Stuerz et al., 2020, this issue),
how to adapt cropping calendars to the respective speed and tim-
ing of the varieties phenological development (Razafindrazaka et al.,
2020, this issue), and do the plants respond to external influences
such as fertilizer application in the same way as in their “native” en-
vironment (Boshuwenda et al., 2020, Senthilkumar et al., 2020, this
issue)? Answering questions like these is crucial for the success of the
modelling approaches behind these apps. Without these data, it will
not be possible to apply the apps to the wide range of agricultural
environments found in smallholder farms throughout the developing
world, especially when facing the challenge of securing food security
in a world of changing climate (Cotter et al., 2020, this issue).
On larger scales digitalization does not come in the form of apps
but requires GIS based, spatially and temporally explicit models.
For this, conceptual models need to be established first that scruti-
nize the current situation and propose a way forward. An example
of such approaches applies to Asian Mega Deltas that are under
pressure from sea level rise and salt intrusion into rice production
systems. These deltas are so vast that only well-calibrated models
are able to yield recommendations for land-use adaptation to the
climate change-induced changes (Schneider et al., 2020, this issue).
The articles published in this issue are based on research that was
presented during the conference “Smallholder targeted Agriculture 4.0
in temperature limited cropping systems (STATCROPS)” organized by
the Hans-Ruthenberg-Institute for Tropical Agricultural Sciences at the
University of Hohenheim and the Africa Rice Center, 20–21 September
2018. The STATCROPS conference addressed the possibilities that
modern digitalization and modelling approaches offer to develop
tools targeted to smallholder farmers, especially in temperature-lim-
ited environments. The conference aimed at linking research, model-
ling and application by discussing ideas, concepts, and experiences to
build feedback- and feed-forward loops targeted at future options for
such cropping systems. The authors would like to thank the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for their support for this conference.
ORCID
Marc Cotter  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5004-654X
Folkard Asch  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6589-9916
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How to cite this article: Cotter M, Asch F. Editorial:
Smallholder targeted Agriculture 4.0 in temperature limited
cropping systems. J Agro Crop Sci. 2020;206:421–422. https://
doi.org/10.1111/jac.12414