Emerging Technologie 724613 NDX

Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar:
Precision Agriculture
Published 30 November 2020 - ID G00724613 - 58 min read
By Analyst(s): Eric Goodness, Kay Sharpington, Emil Berthelsen
Initiatives: Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact on Products and Services
Emerging technologies in the precision agriculture market combine

for digital optimization and transformation across multiple sectors
associated with agricultural yield. Product leaders can use this
Impact Radar to understand the scale and velocity of these
technologies impacting this broad market.
Overview
Key Findings
■ The accelerating deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) endpoints in the agriculture
subsector pushes data, insight and decisions across multiple connected and
invested market sectors.
■ Precision agriculture is a coalescing set of artificial intelligence (AI)- and IoT-centric

solutions to meet global societal challenges relating to the quantity and quality of
yields across all agricultural segments.
■ The data and insight generated from these emerging technologies and trends are
transferable across a broad ecosystem of stakeholders in adjacent and seemingly
far-off sectors that is expressed as a de facto “platform business.”
■ The precision agriculture market is likely to experience a wave of emerging

technology and trend “techquisitions” to create differentiated positions across
agriculture and adjacent sectors such as insurance, manufacturing, services, retail,
and transportation and logistics.
Recommendations
Product leaders looking to develop precision agriculture product planning or expand their
portfolio of technologies must:
Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 1 of 44

■ Ensure broad demand for precision agriculture applications by creating visualization
and reporting capabilities that form an ecosystem of agriculture stakeholders and
adjacent sectors.
■ Develop a broader educational and influence approach by focusing outreach across

private and governmental bodies with vested interests in agriculture.
■ Ensure that the products appeal to markets with verifiable revenue and margin
returns by identifying which agriculture ecosystem stakeholders will benefit most
from IoT-enabled precision agriculture products.
■ Increase the likelihood of market exits by targeting key ecosystem players that
require ecosystem adoption of precision agriculture to optimize and transform
global agriculture markets.
Strategic Planning Assumptions

By the close of 2025, 5% of companies underwriting crop insurance will require IoT
deployments as a prerequisite to insure farmers and growers, up from 0% today.
By the close of 2025, 20% of North American and Western European food processors will
require IoT deployments by farmers and growers as a foundational requirement to supply
products, up from 0% today.
By the close of 2025, at least one national grower in North America, in Europe and in
China will validate and brand “arm-to-table” fresh produce based on a “digital thread”; no
grower makes such an offer today.
Analysis
The Market for Precision Agriculture
Definition of Precision Agriculture
Precision agriculture is a life cycle and ecosystem management approach that converges
IT and operational technology (OT) with OT design patterns to optimize the quality, health,
and yields of crops, animals, farmed aquatic species forestry, and horticultural products.

Ultimately, precision agriculture is an approach to derisk growing and to reduce inputs
while maximizing yield quantity and quality. The opportunities in precision agriculture
grew for technology and service providers with the emergence of the Internet of Things
and related and contributory technologies. Technologies such as global navigation
satellite systems (GNSS), artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), GPS, drones
and robotics, and multiple public and private network services are responsible for the
growing success of precision agriculture. As the market matures, these technologies
increasingly become embedded in farm equipment and infrastructure rather than added
as aftermarket considerations, which anecdotally appears to show that embedded
technologies are an accelerator of adopting precision agriculture practices. See Note 1 for
emerging categories of precision agriculture products and services.
The Impact Radar for Precision Agriculture

Figure 1 shows the Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar for precision
agriculture.
Figure 1. Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar for Precision Agriculture

How to Use the Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar
This Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar content analyzes and illustrates
two significant aspects of impact — when we expect it to have a significant impact on the
market (namely, the range); and how big of an impact it has on relevant markets
(specifically, mass). Each emerging technology or trend profile analysis is composed of
these two aspects. Profiles are organized by range, starting with the center and moving to
the outer rings of the radar. See the Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar
Research and Methodology section for a complete description of our approach to this
research.
The time to impact or “range” is measured in the years to early majority adoption. (Fans of
Geoffrey A. Moore can think of it as the time to cross the chasm.) Early majority adoption
is when technology adoption is “ready for prime time.” It is essential to point out that the
time to technology impact or “range” is not the same as the time to act on the technology.
When and how a technology product or service leader should act is the remit of the
company’s business strategy. Providers that want to be “first-movers” with an emerging
technology or trend need to act far sooner than those that are comfortable waiting for
their competition to compel them into action.
The “mass” component examines the extent of the impact on existing products and
markets. To assess the impact, we explore two main aspects — breadth and depth. The
breadth of impact concerns how many sectors are affected (products, services, markets,
business functions, industries and geographies). The depth of the impact includes an
analysis of the potential disruption to existing products, services and markets.
The objective of this research is to provide technology and service providers (TSPs) with
basic intelligence on how emerging technologies and trends are evolving. Providers can
use this intelligence to determine which are most important to their business and when it
makes sense to advance their products and services by investing in them. Technology
providers should use this Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar to:
1. Identify emerging technologies and trends that are important to the business
2. Determine when to act upon those trends and technologies based on business
strategy
3. Begin formulating a response to the technology or trend’s evolution

Table 1 presents emerging technologies in AI based on time to early mainstream
adoption.
Table 1: Emerging Technologies in Precision Agriculture Based on Time to Adoption
Now 1 to 3 Years 3 to 6 Years 6 to 8 Years
Advanced AI Implementation IoT Platforms Distributed Ledger

Computer Vision and Operations
Services
Edge AI Smart Spaces Fully Autonomous

Driving
Intelligent Product
Applications Servitization
Smart Robots
Emerging Technologies and Trends Radar Profiles

“Now Range” Impacts
Advanced Computer Vision
Back to Top
Analysis by: Danielle Casey and Eric Goodness
Description: Advanced computer vision (CV) refers to the application of AI on video

streams and images for real-time inference and operational and business intelligence.
There are numerous types of CV techniques, which include image, action, and pattern
recognition; image counting and classification; and facial authentication.
Sample Providers: Vinsa, TerraClear, SWIR Vision Systems, XSUN, Cromai, Occipital Tech,
Descartes Labs, Ceres Imaging, InnerPlant
Range: Now (0 to 1 Years)

Gartner considers advanced CV to be in the early majority adoption stage, changing the
Range to “Now” from one to three years in 2019. Advanced CV techniques refer to the use
of AI for complex analytics and real-time operational insights and response. CV-driven
analytics deliver operational efficiencies that cut overall production costs in an industry
defined by constrained resources and low-profit margins. Typically, much of the CV value
is embedded in edge devices or on central servers, though this is dependent on the use
case and business and technical requirements.
The use of CV on satellite and drone imagery to determine crop health, fertilizer
percolation, and pest infestation has been the biggest driver of adoption. Advanced CV is
more often used for animal health behavior, particularly for poultry and swine. Gartner
expects customer adoption of advanced CV applications in agriculture to mirror
implementation rates in other industries. For example, customer adoption of CV-based
surveillance applications will grow more than 50% year over year (YoY) for new video
surveillance use cases. Advanced CV delivers operational and business intelligence that
will drive high adoption rates across the industry in the near term.
Emerging use cases include the use of CV to determine crop and animal quality before
shipping to retail outlets and food processors. Leveraging advanced CV is also an
essential capability within smart robots and other autonomous vehicles in agricultural
settings, enabling automation around crop life cycle management and food production.
Common challenges faced when using advanced computer vision models include brittle
and low-fidelity algorithms, reliability, lack of suitable training data, and related ecosystem
dependencies. Some of these challenges are restated by the use of pretrained networks to
accelerate the training process.
Mass: Very High
Advanced CV is critical business technology to optimize and transform the agricultural

ecosystem over the next five years. Advanced CV is an integral approach to augmenting
and expanding full-time equivalent (FTE) staffing to provide services related to the
continuous monitoring and management of crops and animals. The value associated
with the virtual FTEs adds to the agricultural life cycle resources in a way that is not
economically feasible with human resources. The expansion of FTE capabilities is broad
in terms of use cases. Still, the AI offers a depth of expertise (such as contributing to in-
field prescriptions relating to aerial imagery). Additionally, CV is an essential precursor to
automation by analyzing the unstructured image and video data to automate the farm life
cycles and elicit real-time insights and business intelligence on farming operations.

As crucial to suppliers’ ecosystems to the agricultural sector, CV provides advancing
features that transform existing product capabilities such as farm machinery and
infrastructure and various enclosures and growing environments. Combined with
multispectral and hyperspectral cameras for image acquisition, CV delivers far greater
insight into crop conditions than is available through manual inspection. The activation of
deep learning models in business processes yields a transformational increase in
capabilities that generate significant differentiation to early adopters such as vertical
farming, drones, and robots to support large-scale business process automation and
autonomous vehicles. In total, the advanced CV will deliver outsized business
improvements to a market sector that is already cost and resource-constrained but must
look to drastically improve yields over the next decades.
Recommended Actions
■ Differentiate your advanced CV roadmap by developing high-value, crop-/animal-

specific solutions that deliver value to the agricultural ecosystem’s targeted
segments.
■ Accelerate advanced CV adoption by pushing solutions through nontraditional (to

IT) channels, such as food processors, crop insurance, and farm machinery
manufacturers.
Recommended Reading
Venture Capital Growth Insights: Computer Vision
Video Analytics Functionality Spectrum: Competitive Advantage Lies in Basic

Performance and Unique Features
Emerging Technology Analysis: Integrate Computer Vision Catalysts for Software Product
Innovation
Edge AI
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Analysis by: Eric Goodness and Danielle Casey

Description: Edge AI refers to the use of AI techniques embedded within IoT endpoints,
gateways and edge devices. Use cases range from autonomous vehicles to streaming
analytics. While predominantly focused on AI inference, many systems use statistical
techniques to adapt to and accommodate local conditions.
Sample Providers: Microsoft, Reality AI, FreeWave, Lanner, FogHorn, Deci, Swim, Octonion,
One Tech, Seeed
Range: Now (0 to 1 Year)
In addition to the AI techniques used to create value, edge AI represents an emerging

design pattern for embedding AI across various decision points with IT and OT systems to
improve outcomes and the costs to serve those outcomes. Edge AI occurs across a
multitude of “edges” and environments. The gating factors for edge AI are the design
constraints of the hardware and software deployed. Typical constraints include power,
processing and connectivity. The emergence of edge AI is fortuitous as agriculture is often
relegated to remote regions and thus resource-constrained by location and the attendant
services.
Gartner places edge AI in the early majority stage because there is already an extensive
amount of software deployed to offer proximal data value. Namely, AI embedded in IoT
endpoints is a leading revenue opportunity for TSPs and drives early majority adoption.
Manufacturers and their service provider channels seek market differentiation and
revenue uplift by “servitizing” assets. Here, the IoT endpoint (asset) runs AI models to
interpret captured or external data and drives endpoints functions (automation and
actuation). In this case, the AI model is trained (and updated) on a central system and
deployed to the IoT endpoint. An example is a tractor or irrigation system with embedded
technologies. Edge AI will ultimately allow whole classes of agricultural equipment and
infrastructure to function (nearly) autonomously with local resources onboard.
Increasingly, edge AI is a catalyst for adopting broader IoT solutions because of its ability
to reduce solution costs. In connected agricultural environments, cloud-based solutions
are either unavailable because of issues related to public network services or cost-
prohibitive solutions because assets require connection to cloud systems for intelligence.
A key element to drive adoption of IoT and edge architectures is model optimization on
low-cost processors in “brownfield” farm machinery and infrastructure. In this scenario,
legacy assets can contribute to diagnostic and maintenance capabilities where none
existed previously. The distributed intelligence then becomes an incredible platform for
software services where the users may sweat their infrastructure investments.

IoT adoption by related process industries such as food processors, chemical fertilizer,
and consumer packaged goods (CPG) drives significant interest in innovative edge
analytics and investment in edge AI. Similarly, interested adjacent parties relating to farm
operations such as banking and insurance will require farm data as an element of any
relationship in years to come.
Common use cases for edge AI in precision agriculture solutions include video
surveillance and monitoring, audio event detection, and anomaly detection and data
normalization in data acquisition and farm equipment analyses. Common challenges met
when using edge AI include the lack of robust IT and OT system skills at the farm level,
managing the rebalancing of processing capacity and energy consumption, storing the
parameters of learning and inferencing on resource-constrained devices, as well as
release management of models on distributed devices in the field, underwater or in the air.
Mass: Very High
The development of edge AI solutions by cloud service providers invigorated interest by

industrial enterprises and investors. While most edge AI, solutions need to connect to
cloud services or a remote/local data center at some point for acceleration or data
transfer. However, edge AI is not predestined to become another IT market to be
dominated by the hyperscalers. Edge AI is a platform for revenue and margin growth for
many different TSP market segments, such as:
■ Manufacturers of farm machinery and infrastructure offering products “as a service”

with embedded edge AI
■ Integrators and managed service providers (MSPs) offering bundled and integrated
applications, infrastructure, and smart connected products as managed services
■ Telecommunications providers leveraging their “edge-centric”‘ expertise to provide

multiedge solutions spanning AI embedded in IoT endpoints, gateways, and the far-
edge of the MEC.

Edge AI offers technology product leaders focused on precision agriculture, a new
platform to create new value, new products, and new business models for farmers and the
various ecosystems they operate. Chief among the value proposition for growers is the
enablement of new classes to services such as decision intelligence, the ability to enable
autonomous and automated operations, and to deepen and expand connections and
communications across the agricultural ecosystem at lower costs than current on-
premises deployments and lower prices than completely cloud- and public network-
tethered solutions.
Recommended Actions
■ Partner with service providers focused on the agricultural ecosystem by supplying

edge AI use cases focused on their pain points relating to the farming life cycle.
■ Create a robust indirect channel to market by working with manufacturers seeking to

“servitize” their products.
Recommended Reading
Deploy Leaner AI at the Edge: Comparing Three Architecture Patterns to Enable Edge AI
5 Questions a Product Manager Must Ask When Creating an AI-Enabled Edge Product
Strategy
Intelligent Applications
Back to Top
Analysis by: Alys Woodward and Eric Goodness
Description: Intelligent applications (IA) are enterprise business applications with

embedded or integrated AI technologies, such as intelligent automation, data-driven
insights, and guided recommendations, to deliver a more personalized interface, improve
productivity, and support decision making. Such decision support represents a significant
enhancement to traditionally highly procedural enterprise business applications by
injecting optimization, advisory, and decision support capabilities into the process-centric
workflows.
Sample Providers: Artemis, AgriWebb, Conservis, CropZilla, Farm(x), Phytech, Stellapps

Range: Short (1 to 3 Years)
Traditional farm monitoring and management applications focused on the capabilities to

acquire IoT sensor data across all aspects of growing in terms of crop state and health,
and to correlate the farming life cycles with ongoing operational conditions. The use of AI
to create augmented intelligence features in farm applications is directly attributable to
yield increases and profitability. Additionally, AI and IoT combine to enable and control
production remotely from any internet-enabled mobile device. Growers automate:
■ Tracking of soil, animal aquaculture or forestry conditions.
■ Actuate irrigation and harvesting equipment.
■ State and conditions of storage tanks, elevators, or holding pens or weirs.
■ Control terrestrial or aquatic feed levels in real-time from any internet-enabled device.
Additionally, advanced analytics identify potential equipment and infrastructure
failures, anomalous activities, and events across all farming modalities for proactive
remediation.
The software is increasingly expanding to integrate more business-side capabilities to

create and capture operational and process records that contribute to decision making for
improved farm operations. Such capabilities fuse information with monitoring of crops,
physical plant, and assets with farm processes, such as preventative maintenance, soil,
and animal testing, visual inspection cadences, and scheduling.
The multisector ecosystem that supports agricultural-related markets is likely the best
example of the need and the value of combining proximal data with data from a diverse
array of generators and providers. IoT sensor data, weather service feeds, data feeds from
farming cooperatives and local universities relating to pest infestations help farm
management systems provide better decision support, advise with better prescriptions,
and make improved operational decisions.
Ultimately, operational visibility, analytics, and decision support require sufficient reporting
and visualization capabilities to ensure knowledge transfer, historical perspective, and
inferencing. Visualization in these intelligent applications is a differentiator for knowledge
transfer to constituencies largely unfamiliar with IT, statistics, or data science.

Common challenges faced with intelligent applications include lack of necessary data,
organizations’ unwillingness to access their data for high-value decision making, and a
legacy cynicism toward IT. Based on conversations across the agricultural ecosystem,
Gartner believes that these intelligent applications’ adoption rates will recognize robust
adoption when TSPs push the applications through influential members of the ecosystem,
namely, food processors and insurance companies with a focus on crop and animal
insurance. Governments also can provide a more significant role in precision agriculture.
Governments were a powerful catalyst for the widespread adoption of technologies for
electronic health records (EHRs). Similarly, governments requiring better visibility of yields
and more robust reporting should consider programs within local extension service
entities and subsidies that facilitate the adoption of intelligent applications for precision
agriculture.
Mass: Very High
All applications relating to agriculture will ultimately become intelligent via the use of AI,
making the mass for intelligent applications very high.
The challenge for product leaders is to determine the traditional forms of analyses that
are most useful for the various forms of agriculture, for example, standard key
performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics within manufacturing include throughput, cycle
time, material yield variance, OEE, TEE, golden batch, and Monte Carlo. Similarly,
intelligent applications for precision agriculture offer outputs and analyses for both
farming and operational insight such as:
■ Prescriptions for soil amendments, pesticides, or chemical fertilizer applications
■ Estimation of (flood) inundation
■ Phenology of crops and animals (pollination, estrus, leaf emergence)
■ Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)
■ Quantify plant loss of biomass (TOL1, REG2)
■ Simulation of weather impact
■ Hidden opportunities for production
■ Timing harvest based on market and environmental contingencies
■ Probabilities of nutrient uptake and leaching

■ Evapotranspiration (GDD, PET, and P-PET)
Just as there is an incredible diversity of crops and animals, there will be a corresponding
diversity of applications and providers in the market. A key pain point for large food
processors, retailers, and crop insurers is the diversity of applications focused on just a
few crops. Applications that focus on dairy animals and cattle do not necessarily extend
to lamb, poultry or swine. Similarly, applications with advanced analytics for corn, cane, or
soy rarely extend to grapes or soft-stone fruit. Ecosystem partners outside of the farm
seek solutions that can aggregate their portfolios — investments and risk — into a “single
screen.”
Recommended Actions
■ Begin adding AI capabilities into your products to improve competitive positioning

by identifying crop-specific customer needs and developing differentiated
capabilities to address.
■ Add immediate value by providing AI value on datasets acquired by farm equipment

and related telematics solutions.
Recommended Reading
2020 Strategic Roadmap for the Future of Applications
Use Gartner’s Reference Model to Deliver Intelligent Composable Business Applications
Short-Range Impacts
AI Implementation and Operations Services
Back to Top
Analysis by: Chrissy Healy and Eric Goodness
Description: AI implementation and operations services offer a continuum of support,

maintenance, and professional services to build, scale, and run AI-centric projects and
solutions for targeted business outcomes.
Sample Providers: Crayon, Data Science Automation, Malisko Engineering, Wunderlich-

Malec, RELX Group (Proagrica)

Range: Short (1 to 3 Years)
While the market continues to grow with investments that explore various AI technologies
and techniques, a shortage of expertise required to build, scale, and operate AI-centric
projects and solutions impedes its full potential. Such challenges are especially true
within the agricultural sector.
Thus, AI implementation and operations service providers have exhibited strong growth.
These services have helped clients within the agricultural sector move beyond strategy
and pilot projects to building business processes using machine learning, robotics, and
other AI-powered approaches to generate new revenue opportunities across the enterprise.
Lightweight prototypes and free POCs are increasingly common as much of the
agricultural sector’s value-added services come from the hardware OEMs and the IoT and
AI software vendors. The services to help clients scale these AI-centric initiatives beyond
production is still emerging. The use of third-party services to apply AI to operations and
the go-to-market process is accelerating. Service providers are vital to helping growers
connect to the vast and powerful agricultural ecosystem, which spans banking, insurance,
cooperative and processors, retailers, and suppliers.
AI implementation and operations services for precision agriculture focuses on common

use cases such as farm management and process automation and optimization.
When using AI implementation and operations services, common challenges include a

legacy cultural divide between IT integrators and growers who generally eschew IT. Early
engagements often suffered from poorly scoped engagements and a lack of sector-
specific knowledge within the provider’s organization. The cost has also been a significant
challenge in an industry that is preternaturally margin constrained. The biggest
impediment to success lies in the lack of traditional IT knowledge and experience in the
OT integrator space. The legacy OT integrators have a significant understanding of the
various control systems for managing the assets, buildings, and infrastructure found
within multiple farms. However, these providers lack a deep bench of IT skills. They lack
the knowledge and expertise to integrate leading-edge AI solutions such as robotics and
CV. Success may lie in alliances between traditional IT and OT value-added resellers.
Mass: Medium

Like all complex, new technology markets, AI is driving the use of third-party resources for
strategy, application and software development, and integration, as well as some
operations services (like outsourcing or managed services). Gartner sees emerging
managed services portfolios as pull-through levers for increased AI adoption. IT and OT
integrators can bundle and annuitize IT and OT systems and ongoing operational services
to be key to AI adoption in the agricultural sector.
The application of AI technologies and techniques to address impediments that will

improve yields profitably represents the next wave of implementation and operations
services. Services providers will need to create platform businesses specifically aimed at
precision agriculture outcomes. Gartner believes that users seek AI implementation and
operations services to develop all classes of farm management solutions.
Recommended Actions
■ AI implementation and operations service providers must improve their value by

working with manufacturers and resellers of agricultural assets and infrastructure.
■ AI implementation and operations service providers will enhance long-term success

when monitoring is performed remotely and at low cost, and fulfillment is local and
familiar with the customer.
Recommended Reading
Market Insight: 3 Ways AI Is Transforming Consulting and System Integration Services
Product Leadership Vision for IT Services — Trends and Technologies
AI Service Maturity Model: Tech CEOs Must Challenge the Maturity of Their AI Services to
Excel in a Crowded Market
Midrange Impacts
IoT Platforms
Back to Top
Analysis by: Eric Goodness and Emil Berthelsen

Description: An IoT platform is a software that enables the development, deployment, and
management of solutions that connect to and capture data from IoT endpoints to drive
improved business decisions. Functional capabilities include IoT edge device
management, integration tools and management, data management, analytics,
application enablement and management, and security.
IoT platforms may be deployed on-premises, a cloud-based IoT platform as a service

(PaaS), or as a hybrid consisting of edge software as IoT PaaS.
Sample Providers: 30MHz, thethings.iO, Rayven Technologies, Infiswift Technologies,

Actility, Pycno
Range: Medium (3 to 6 Years)
The adoption of stand-alone IoT platforms to create broader precisions agriculture

solutions has been slow to develop. The precision agriculture market is application-centric
in that the principal value for IoT — in terms of data acquisition, ingestion, and analyses —
is embedded in process-centric applications. Gartner sees the adoption of stand-alone IoT
platforms by service providers creating service-delivery platforms (SDP) for managed
services by massive, often global, growers pursuing a self-developed solution for precision
agriculture. As mentioned earlier in this document, adjacent stakeholders in agriculture,
such as crop insurers, retailers, and food processors, are expected to not only invest in IoT
platforms; Gartner predicts that some of these vendors will acquire IoT platform
companies outright. The rationale for this type of “techquisition” within this ecosystem is
the need to deploy a “service bus” that effectively creates a “digital thread” from farm to
processor to logistics to retailer to offer insight into yield quality, supply chain loss (such
as theft and spoilage), and food security in terms of contamination. Such a digital thread
offers the agricultural ecosystem a platform for additional value:
■ Insurers and financial services can quantify and manage risk based on yield quantity
and quality.
■ Food and commodities processors and cooperatives understand the amount and
quality of yield from the platform to harvesting to acceptance.
■ Chemical fertilizer and seed stock vendors can better project needs and compress
the time between buying cycles.
■ Retailers have unprecedented levels of information relating to the quantity, quality,

and sizes of yield that can create a premium market segment based on security and
quality.

In fact, over the next few years, private market-based agricultural ecosystems will likely do
more to ensure food quality due to the farming’ digital thread than any government is
likely to build or mandate.
A crowded marketplace and a lack of investment by service providers to create robust and
competitive service practices to plan and build a broad continuum of platforms inhibit the
IoT platform market. However, few IoT platforms differentiate their value for precision
agriculture.
Mass: Medium
IoT has broad appeal across all sectors in terms of value derived from connecting and
analyzing assets and processes. Initial estimations of market opportunity point to a more
extensive installed base of consumer IoT (B2C) and commercial IoT. However, the total
economic impact of IoT within industrial enterprises will prove to be a broader market in
the long term as IoT begins to augment and replace the functions of OT systems.
What has distinguished the IoT platform market over the past few years is the impact of
non-IT, nontraditional buying centers that drive increasing demand for IoT solutions. This
trend will increase as IoT becomes more entwined with digital business. The investments
required to be competitive are rising through the use of cloud and traditional analytics and
innovative AI-ML techniques.
Recommended Actions
■ Establish a go-to-market focus by determining which IoT market segment —

consumer, commercial, industrial — aligns with common use cases and outcomes
supported by the IoT catalog. AI-enabled solutions offer a natural “refreshment
cycle” to revisit past engagement to provide net new value to loyal customers.
■ Extend the IoT platform into digital business initiatives by developing value-added
IoT applications and technology alliances to expand the impact of outcomes.
Recommended Reading
Emerging Technologies: IoT Platforms for Digital Optimization and Transformation
Forecast: Enterprise IoT Platforms, Worldwide, 2018-2024
Competitive Landscape: IoT Platform Vendors

Use the IoT Platform Solution Reference Model to Help Design Your End-to-End IoT
Business Solutions
Forecast Analysis: Enterprise IoT Platforms, Worldwide
Smart Spaces
Back to Top
Analysis by: Eric Goodness and Annette Jump
Description: A smart space is a physical or digital environment in which humans and

technology-enabled systems interact in increasingly open, connected, coordinated, and
intelligent ecosystems. The design patterns to create smart spaces goes by many names,
including “smart city,” “digital workspaces,” “smart venues,” and “ambient intelligence.”
Sample Providers: agri-space, Merck, Serket, IRED
Range: Medium (3 to 6 Years)
For precision agriculture, the main focus for smart spaces will center on tracking livestock
and poultry movement and receiving early indicators for changes in health, birth activity,
body temperature, hydration, and unhealthful activity. Smart spaces are a combinatorial
approach to value creation that generally involves IoT and various AI forms, including
computer vision, robotics, and sensors embedded within the environment and placed on
livestock, poultry, and aquatic environments.
The range identified for “smart spaces” set a threshold for the market. While many
elements of IoT and AI apply to grow and livestock environments, the drive to eliminate
human labor and automate the life cycle of livestock and crops is an early stage. The cost
associated with smart space investments will require more lessons to separate soft cash
value from explicit hard cash gains (and a reduction in the cost to adopt such solutions).
Using the dairy market as an example of use cases and early success, smart spaces have
proven effective by leveraging:
■ CV-enabled systems, as well as sensors placed on the livestock, surveil feeding

habits, and the availability of feed for all animals.
■ Robotic feeding and milking machines have combined to improve the health of the
dairy stock. In some cases, dairy animals choose when to be milked.

■ Cleaning robots create a more hygienic environment.
■ Connected and automated buildings allow for free passage by the animals,
depending on animal health and the weather.
These emerging systems employ deep learning algorithms to detect abnormal behavior
relating to physical activity, aggressiveness, and feeding patterns, creating unique profiles
and understanding each animal’s habits.
Smart spaces also extend to traditional glasshouse growing environments and the
emergence of urban vertical farms. Many vertical farm operations have found that
leveraging IoT and AI can obviate investments in legacy building intelligence and
management systems. Vertical farming represents some of the most complex
environments that span IT and OT to combine IoT, computer vision, augmented
intelligence, process automation, and robotics.
Common challenges faced when creating smart spaces include the technical debt and
costs for integrating AI with diverse operational technologies such as dairy management,
building intelligence, and lighting controls.
Mass: High
Smart spaces have enjoyed early adoption from vertical sectors such as commercial real
estate and public sector multifamily housing; however, the emerging market offers
significant value to the agricultural industry.
A major catalyst to the emergence of smart spaces in agriculture are requirements to:
■ Improve yield at lower costs.
■ Improve the health, welfare, and living conditions of livestock and poultry.
■ Identify disease earlier in animals to reduce cross-species contagion.
■ Growth of crops in cities and harsh climates (vertical farming).

As growers and producers are increasingly under pressure to grow yields while also
improving animals’ welfare, many elements of smart spaces will be rapidly adopted to
achieve those goals. Societal pressure to enhance the welfare and health of animals is
increasing pressure on growers and processors. Where growers and processors do not
adopt smart spaces, there may be government pressure over time.
Recommended Actions
■ Determine which smart spaces solutions to develop by aligning new investments

with segments most impacted by growing costs for FTEs and other resources.
■ Work with ecosystem vendors, such as retailers and agricultural suppliers, to identify
bundled solutions to help growers create new, branded offerings for the retailers’
customers.
Recommended Reading
Emerging Technology Analysis: Smart Spaces
VC Investment Growth Insights for Smart Spaces
Long-Range Impacts
Distributed Ledger
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Analysis by: Rajesh Kandaswamy and Eric Goodness
Description: Distributed ledgers are an expanding list of cryptographically signed,

irrevocable transactional records shared by all network participants. Each record is time-
stamped and linked to previous transactions. They form the foundation of an underlying
basis of blockchain technologies.

Distributed ledgers are among a portfolio of technologies that make up the blockchain.
The others include smart contracts, and tokenization. The core elements of blockchain
technology are immutability, encryption, peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution, decentralization,
and tokenization. These technologies create new possibilities in how we manage digital
trust, enable decentralization, and execute transactions, and how we exchange value
across parties. They promise the ability to disrupt current business models and processes
by removing intermediaries in different industries. Many blockchain startups have
emerged to help reshape existing industry ecosystems. Enterprises view them as a
support for technology that can improve efficiencies, but this is yet to be proven
consistently.
Sample Providers: AgriLedger, AgriDigital, Bart.Digital, Provenance, IBM and Ethereum,

Skuchain, Microsoft
Range: Long (6 to 8 Years)
Interest in distributed ledger technologies (DLT) relating to the agricultural ecosystem and
precision agriculture is tapering, and actual production implementations at scale are rare.
Many large enterprises within the agricultural ecosystem, such as financial services and
insurance, food processors, and retailers, are in the exploratory phase and struggle to
identify business cases where this technology can provide more value than alternative
technologies.
Early adopter projects tend to be unique business processes, have intercompany flows,
and operate where commercial software is not available. Common use cases of
distributed ledgers (and blockchain) include:
■ Grower identity: Growers and the broader supply chain register to create a unique
identifier. Each participant is recognized as a trusted player in the supply chain,
including financial services, insurance, transportation and logistics, retailers,
government, and other services.
■ Yield digitization: Farm yields such as livestock, crops, aquatics are digitized through
tokenization, creating liquidity to enable trade. Yield digitization increases
commodity markets’ value through the participation of important trusted members
spanning production, processing, and retail.
■ Transactions history: Farmers use the digitized ledger for tracking transactions and
income, which is shared with suppliers and bankers which eases growers’ access to
financial services.

■ Digital wallet: The digital wallet represents the user interface that facilitates financial
transactions between farmers and buyers. The digital wallet enables accelerated
payments and supports efficiencies throughout the supply chain.
The driving forces for adopting DLT in precision agriculture solutions will be ecosystem
partners beyond the growers. Gartner believes that the use of DLT by growers will be
forced upon growers as a requirement to participate within an agriculture ecosystem. The
primary forces driving the adoption of DLT by growers will be financial services, food
processors, and retailers.
Mass: High
The potential for digital ledgers and related technology solutions is massive in the
agricultural sector. Gartner estimates that DLTs are relevant to agricultural production,
including cultivation, fertilization, feeding, and harvesting.
The digitization of the precision agriculture supply chain is supported by DLTs where
physical resources and processes (e.g., inputs such as seed, stock, fertilizer, feed) and the
resulting yields are monitored and represented via digital technologies in the form of
sensor readings, digital signatures, RFID tagging (among other methods) and recorded in
digital ledgers and/or blockchains as an immutable record for participants in the
agricultural ecosystem. The adoption of precision agriculture solutions by growers
establishes the digital platform, enabling block validation to create a trusted chain of
transactions that extends trust that spans the farm, processors, distributors, retailers, and
consumers. Agriculture involves a variety of entities including farmers, suppliers (seed,
fertilizer, machinery, etc.), traders, financial institutions and government organizations.
Blockchain’s capability to ensure data integrity across multiple parties and track the
provenance of goods can be useful to improve efficiency. But, blockchain products and
services that offer a compelling value proposition that can be adopted with a high level of
confidence are not yet available broadly. We expect this to evolve through a combination
of technology maturity, solutions from blockchain companies and adoption by large
agricultural companies.
Private investment in precision agriculture inclusive of DLTs is likely the most expeditious
and effective way to secure food supplies and other agricultural output so that
governments cannot (and have demonstrated very little level of effort to build).
Recommended Actions

■ Explore how distributed ledgers, along with smart contracts and tokenization,
identify the value paths pulled through by your farm management software
solutions.
■ Make informed investments in blockchain for precision agriculture by engaging in

private-labeled partnerships. Any decisions relating to acquiring intellectual property
(IP) and capabilities should be based on lessons learned and a proven ability to sell
DLT solutions.
Recommended Reading
Hype Cycle for Blockchain Technologies, 2020
Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2020: Practical Blockchain
Assessing the Optimal Blockchain Technology for Your Use Case
Fully Autonomous Driving
Back to Top
Analysis by: Michael Ramsey and Eric Goodness
Description: Fully autonomous driving employs perception sensors tied to decision-

making algorithms to guide a vehicle through a road environment without human
assistance. Autonomous driving uses lidar, radar, cameras, GPS, and high-definition map
data, combined with AI-based decision making on a computing platform.
Sample Providers: AGCO (Fendt), DOTS Technology, John Deere, Autonomous Tractor
Corp., CNH Industrial (Case IH)
Range: Long (6 to 8 years)
The agriculture-focused vehicle manufacturers working to create vehicular autonomy

have made progress over the past few years to apply new technologies to a conservative
and cost-sensitive market sector. Perhaps the largest challenges faced by manufacturers
and focused IT product leaders are how to accelerate development to expand capabilities
and ensure the capabilities are compelling enough for growers’ adoption. Other point
specific challenges include:

■ The cost and functionality of lidar and leading-edge technologies in various
agricultural grower environments
■ The capabilities of perception systems to discern the environmental obstacles and

conditions
■ The capabilities to determine actions in the field based on perceptions relating to

phenology
■ The ability to build and update high-definition maps over large geographic areas
■ The cost-effectiveness and robustness of local connectivity for cloud services and
the cost of onboard local compute and edge AI for operations based solely on
proximal data
The use of autonomous vehicles will likely be adopted broadly in grower environments
sooner than logistics applications as in-field regulations are embryonic to nonexistent in
most regions. Common use cases for autonomous vehicles span the agricultural life cycle
spanning cultivation, planting, fertilization, and harvesting. The most common
impediment to adoption is cost. Gartner expects that product servitization is likely a
business model trend that will positively influence autonomous farm equipment adoption.
Mass: Very High
There are obvious differences between mobility services serving various transportation
and logistics functions; however, much of the technologies that advance fully
autonomous driving on highways and streets will also push farming to new output and
efficiency levels.
The impact of fully autonomous driving and operation of farming equipment offers
society and business mostly positive effects, including removing human resources from
the growing life cycle in both mature and emerging economies. Autonomous vehicles
cultivate, plant, feed, and harvest at much greater volumes, with much greater precision at
optimal moments, at any time, which improves yield while lowering the cost of inputs
throughout the growing life cycle.
The rise of autonomy may change the landscape of players in the growing life cycle.
Automated growing may inspire more processors to become growers or retailers and
cooperatives to become growers. While the potential for business models and market
disintermediation changes is enormous, the current cost structure of autonomous vehicles
in agriculture will emerge slowly.

Recommended Actions
■ Reduce the risk of product development investments by pursuing collaborative

development partnerships with farm equipment manufacturers.
■ Disrupt the farm vehicle market by driving development that is innovative in terms of
capabilities and radically reduces the cost to deploy autonomous technologies
today.
Recommended Reading
Hype Cycle for Connected Vehicles and Smart Mobility, 2020
Cool Vendors in Autonomous Vehicle Systems
Utilize Partnerships to Secure a Winning Position in the Autonomous Driving Ecosystem
Product Servitization
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Analysis by: Eric Goodness
Description: Originally referenced as “IoT-enabled product as a service,” product

servitization is a commercial model where OEMs and service providers add a continuum
of value. The value is generally a series of services relating to asset support, maintenance,
and management, such as:
■ Incident and problem management services
■ Availability and performance-focused services
■ Software release and change management services
■ Access management services
■ Security services

Generally, when products are servitized, the delivery of value is contingent on the existence
of embedded or aftermarket technologies to connect and control product-related
outcomes. Most importantly, the connection of assets to private or public network services
allows for remote delivery of value, which offers more immediacy of response and action
and a more streamlined and efficient cost structure.
The ultimate expression of value enabled by product servitization is that assets that are
always connected, visible, and manageable allow OEMs or OEM partners to offer capital
assets as outcomes priced as recurring operating charges rather than a nonrecurring
capital asset acquisition. When products are “servitized,” the user acquires asset-based
services (outputs), scoped within agreements defining the fitness for purpose and the
desired outcomes relating to performance, availability, and quality of output.
Product servitization applies common IoT design patterns and industry frameworks to
provide an ecosystem of stakeholders — such as enterprises, manufacturers, and financial
intermediaries — the data and control required to ensure asset effectiveness and
availability. Key to this emerging business model’s success is the use of embedded
technologies, advanced analytics, and AI techniques for optimized functionality and to
provide users and service providers asset insight and control.
Sample providers: Aria Systems; John Deere; Particle; Samsung Electronics; Siemens;
Hello Tractor, Xylem; SCHÄFER WERKE Group; Michelin; Zuora
Range: Long (6 to 8 years)
Traditional financing of enterprise IT and non-IT assets is a well-known approach to

acquiring products. Despite some “utility-based consumption washing” from product
marketing managers, industrial and commercial assets are adopted based on the true
spirit of as-a-service where fee structures are utilization-based and not grounded in
minimum contract terms and revenue commitments; note that such fee structures are
nascent but growing.

To implement product servitization, manufacturers, certified distributors and resellers, and
service providers must apply IoT and AI innovation to create “intelligent” connected
products. Embedded technologies empower remote product monitoring, control and
optimization, and feature expansion through software release and change management
(upgrades, updates, and patches). Servitized products are integrated with the asset
owner’s back-end business and operational applications (not the user) to ensure the
frequency and quality of outputs. For example, servitized products automate
consumables procurement and spare parts from the manufacturer or an ecosystem
partner for fulfillment. Additionally, integrating a servitized product with field service
management systems enables the product to schedule a repair with a knowledgeable and
skilled repair resource without intermediaries at the customer site or within the
manufacturer.
Common use cases for product servitization in agriculture include the sale of “mobile”
assets such as irrigation, planting and harvesting equipment based on usage. Companies
such as Caterpillar and Michelin have made strategic acquisitions to servitize their
products to direct end-user customers such as Michelin’s “tires and trucks by the mile” or
through their distribution channels such as Caterpillar’s use of acquired IoT and digital
commerce software to enable the reseller channel’s ability to provide heavy industrial
equipment on a usage basis. Increasingly, Gartner sees storage containers and tanks, and
air compressors as a growing market for servitized products. The most common
impediment to product servitization is any approach to risk mitigation by manufacturers
and service providers. If the asset is large or if an asset integrates into the physical plant,
it is nearly impossible to remove the risk inherent in at-will contracts associated with as-a-
service structures. Often, TSPs are challenged when working with an OEM to create a
pricing structure that removes upfront costs for deployment, makes a minimum contract
term, or avoids pressures to assume liquidated damages commensurate with lost
opportunity nonperformance.
Gartner believes that offering large, mobile farm equipment on a usage basis will
transform farming in emerging economies unable to afford assets to meet the growing
food demand for a growing middle class.
Mass: Very High

The technical driver for servitized products is that all the technologies needed to
implement such a business model are readily available. These technologies have
demonstrated improvements in functionality and the reduction of resource constraints
year over year. A commercial driver for product servitization is the strong overall business
trend to shift business costs from asset ownership and capital expenditure to asset
subscription and operating expenses.
Technical inhibitors to the adoption of product servitization include the complexity of end-
to-end IoT and AI business solutions and difficulties relating to specific technical
challenges, such as device management, security, integration, and information
management. Key commercial inhibitors include the relatively immature product
servitization business model, challenging SLAs across the ecosystem, nonperformance
penalties, and the opening of access to manage assets, which are considered critical
infrastructure or within security instrumented environments.
Manufacturers are asset-intensive enterprises. Generally, the likelihood of asset-intensive

enterprises looking to own and amortize the assets they manufacture diminishes the
larger and costlier the asset. Gartner believes that product servitization among OEMs will
focus more on managed services and value-added support and maintenance services
over the next 10 years. However, the OEMs’ distribution and the resale channel will be
aggressive providers of servitized products in the market. As IT and OT system integrators
and outsourcers seek opportunities for premises-based opportunities associated with
product servitization, the market will look to OEMs with organic and partnered resources
to integrate IoT and AI into their finished goods.
Recommended Actions
■ Ensure your success as a service provider to enable product servitization by offering

an equal measure of business model insight and enabling technologies to support
the migration to as-a-service.
■ Create loyalty with OEMs that want to servitize products by creating service catalogs
for their users and partners based on access to data spanning the customer and
ecosystem and by creating a spectrum of self-service capabilities to reduce user
objections.
Recommended Reading
Platform Business Models That Adapt and Disrupt

Evolving the Capabilities of Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms
Digital Business Models Compendium
2020 Strategic Roadmap for IT/OT Alignment
Smart Robots
Back to Top
Analysis by: Annette Jump and Eric Goodness
Description: A smart robot is an AI-powered, often mobile, machine designed to

autonomously execute one or more physical tasks (create predictable outcomes and learn
within a range of defined parameters or unpredictable results but a specific range of
parameters). There are many different types of smart robots. Based on the tasks/use
cases that a robot performs, Gartner segments them into several categories: personal
robots, smart robots, logistic robots, and industrial robots. Included in this definition are
drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).
Sample Providers: GEA, Soft Robotics, Root, ecoRobotix, Harvest Automation, Honeycomb,
Naïo Technologies, WIWAM, Livestock Robotics, Small Robot, SkyBridge UAS
Range: Long (6 to 8 Years)
The robotics market is complex, diversified, and continuously evolving, with

advancements made to components, software, navigation, vision capabilities, and the AI
platforms to train and manage them.
Agricultural robots automate a range of repetitive tasks for growers. Common use cases
for robots in agriculture include:
■ Harvesting
■ Weed control which applies targeted chemicals or even chemical-free approaches
■ Autonomous seeding, thinning, and pruning
■ Phenotyping
■ Sorting and packing

■ Livestock tending and herding
■ Cleaning livestock areas
■ Visual inspection and spectroscopy-based analyses
■ Field inspection to help farmers improve crop yield
Smart robots will grow modestly over the next few years and accelerate beginning in
2023. Early adoption centers on drones surveying fields to assess crop health and pest
infestations. New venture capital (VC) investments into robotic startups have totaled $2.2
billion between 2017-2019, but fluctuated significantly in the last three years based on
PitchBook investment data. Just under $54 million of the tracked investments focused on
robotics dedicated to agriculture during that period.
Common challenges faced when creating smart robots include navigation, harvesting
capabilities, broad phenotyping catalogs to extend usefulness, conversational abilities to
increase the ease of operation, applying swarm analytics, and meshed intelligence,
leveraging AI within closed-loop systems in farm operations (especially vertical farming
environments).
Mass: High
Robots and robotic innovations apply across all agricultural domains (such as forestry,
arable crops, aquaculture, and animal husbandry). Today’s robots focus on tasks within
the agricultural life cycle where automated tasks are equivalent or exceed the efficiency of
full-time equivalent (FTE) headcount or large, purpose-built machines.
Many early adopters are finding success in pairing terrestrial robots and aerial vehicles
(drones) as a practical approach for crop life cycle management. Robotics for livestock
management is a growing opportunity to use automated services such as milking stations
for dairy and aggression management for poultry. Robots offer growers a chance to scale
FTE labor impact without the burden of human resource issues and challenges.

The future of robotics in precision agriculture delivers huge gains for growers, but the
competitive moat for providing robots with low-level, repetitive tasks is narrow. Ultimately,
robots must become agricultural factotums capable of multiple tasks and capable of
redeployment to multiple farming environments and crop types to provide differentiated
value. Over the next few years, Gartner expects to see mesh intelligence elements and self-
organization among a fleet of land- and air-based robotic systems. Such swarms will
formulate management practices, take instructions from farm management systems, and
self-organize to fulfill tasks. The swarms will also prepare growing areas or harvest crops
at peak market prices (or by premium yield) and prepare crops for entry into the broader
supply chain.
Likely the largest impediment to adoption is cost over the next five years. However, Gartner
expects to see manufacturers (and service providers) enter this market with robots offered
as a utility (pay-per-use) model. There is a strong possibility that service providers may
engage some growers to assume primary and secondary farming responsibilities. Such
engagements may likely guarantee yield (or yield quality) and recognize contingent fees
based on successfully meeting yield and yield quality outcomes (in addition to service
fees).
Recommended Actions
■ Increase the likelihood of robot adoption by going to market with utility-based

models and focus on a specific activity/function within a farm.
■ Seek to fulfill the life cycle value of robotic solutions by building, buying, or
borrowing terrestrial and air-based capabilities as part of farm management
solutions.
Recommended Reading
Emerging Technologies Venture Capital Growth Insights: Robots
Infographic: Emerging Technologies Venture Capital Growth Insights: Robots
Hype Cycle for Drones and Mobile Robots, 2020
Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2020: Autonomous Things
The Impact

Emerging Technologies and Trends Watch List for Precision Agriculture
The list that follows is of emerging AI technologies and trends that we are currently
observing. Despite being considered for inclusion in our AI Emerging Technologies and
Trends Impact Radar, we opted to omit them for this document on precision agriculture
because, in our judgment, they fall into one or more of the following categories — too
early, too mature or has not yet demonstrated the potential for significant impact at its
current state relating to precision agriculture.
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list — instead, it serves as a current list of

remaining technologies or trends that we have identified, but is subject to change as we
discover innovations.
■ Robotic medical diagnostics (animal welfare)
■ Low earth orbit (LEO) satellites
■ Swarm intelligence/mesh intelligence
■ Autonomous UAVs
Noteworthy Trends Accelerating Precision Agriculture

Value for Diverse Crops and Livestock Is Fractured and Diffused
Emerging vendors offer compelling value to improve the day-to-day practices and
processes for growing crops and livestock. However, the value of various farm
management platforms and applications begin and end with a single crop or animal. The
lack of domain extensibility creates a technical challenge for growers with diverse crops
and animal types. It is difficult for the agricultural ecosystem to partner and standardizes
on a few solutions for broad coverage. Some insurers provide coverage for nearly 200
crops. To create some form of platform-business for farmers is challenging. The main
challenge lies in creating a programmatic platform for partnering with hundreds of tiny,
very local technology companies.
Dramatic Changes in Global Demographics Impacts Demand for Food and Labor

Changing demographics is negatively impacting labor dedicated to agriculture. Currently,
agriculture employs nearly 27% of the global workforce. In less developed countries, the
percentage of the workforce dedicated to agriculture can range from 60% to 80%. In much
of the developing world, the demographic changes are most injurious as those countries
begin with significant yield gaps compared to mature economies. Labor is not and cannot
be the answer to the challenge of food security. The yield gaps can become injurious to
emerging economies as more resources become dedicated to imports rather than
applying technology to reduce their yield gaps.
Growth of IoT Endpoints in Agriculture

Gartner’s preliminary forecasts for IoT in the agricultural sector reveal strong growth in IoT
endpoints’ installed base. Gartner segregates the market into three categories: equipment,
livestock, and crop farming.
Globally, Gartner forecasts that the installed base of 89.7 million IoT endpoints in 2019
will grow to nearly 379 million installed IoT endpoints in 2026. That is a compound
annual growth rate (CAGR) of just under 23%. Note that these IoT endpoints do not reflect
the broader installed base of IoT endpoints in support of precision agriculture. This
endpoints pool will include mobility assets and infrastructure for transportation and
logistics (such as fleet and cold-chain management and related food security monitoring).
The Future of Precision Agriculture Depends Upon Reverse Innovation and Jugaad
Innovation

While market drivers and the higher cost of labor compel mature economies to invest in
precision agriculture, emerging economies require lower-cost solutions to recognize the
cost-benefits of investment — not just the assurance for increases in yield quantity and
quality. Reverse innovation is an improvement or workaround in a technology or product
first applied to technology or business problems in emerging economy countries. Reverse
innovation occurs when technologies created for emerging economies recognize
acceptance and adoption within mature economies. Generally, reverse innovations are
responsible for accelerating adoption based on cost-effectiveness. Jugaad is an Indian
colloquialism which translates roughly to “make it work.” Idiomatically, jugaad is closer to
the phrase “do-it-yourself” and the word “hack.” Jugaad equates to approaching problems
that seek solutions that offer the desired outcome based on the most frugal approach to
problem-solving. These concepts are important to stimulate growth in emerging
economies and to reignite growth in mature economies. Gartner expects that several
external influencers will push growers to accelerate the adoption of precision agriculture.
Gartner is witnessing the first wave of native innovators in Eurasia, Emerging Asia/Pacific,
Eastern Europe, Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. See Note 2 for a
representative list.
The Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar Research and Methodology
As previously mentioned, the Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar content
analyzes and illustrates two significant aspects of impact:
1. When we expect it to have a significant impact on the market (specifically, range)
2. How big an impact it will have on relevant markets (namely, mass)
Analysts evaluate range and mass independently and score them each on a one to five
Likert-type scale:
■ For range, this scoring determines in which radar ring the emerging technologies and
trends will appear.
■ For mass, the score determines the size of the radar point.

In the Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar, the range estimates the distance
(in years) that the technology, technique or trend is from crossing over from early adopter
status to early majority adoption. This indicates that the technology is prepared for and
progressing toward mass adoption. So, at its core, range is an estimation of the rate at
which successful customer implementations will accelerate. That acceleration is scored
on a five-point scale with one being very distant (beyond eight years) and five being very
near (within a year). Each of the five scoring points correspond to a ring of the Emerging
Technologies and Trends Impact Radar graphic (see Figure 1). Those emerging
technologies and trends with a score of one (beyond eight years) do not qualify for
inclusion on the radar. When formulating scores for range, Gartner analysts consider
many factors including:
■ The volume of current successful implementations
■ The rate of new successful implementations
■ The number of implementations required to move from early adopter to early

majority
■ The growth of the vendor community
■ The growth in venture investment
Mass in the Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar estimates how substantial
an impact the technology or trend will have on existing products and markets. Mass is
also scored on a five-point scale — with one being very low impact and five being very
high impact. Emerging technologies and trends with a score of one are not included in the
radar. When evaluating mass, Gartner analysts examine the breadth of impact across
existing products (specifically, sectors affected) and the extent of the disruption to
existing product capabilities.
It should be noted that an emerging technology or trend may be expressed in different

positions on different Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radars. This occurs
when the maturity of emerging technologies and trends vary based on the scope of radar
coverage. For example, the use of virtual personal assistants (VPAs) within the cyber-
physical security products may differ from use in the ERP sector. Therefore, as we deliver
sector-specific Emerging Technologies and Trends Radars, VPAs may be in different rings
across different radars.
Expected Outcomes From the Impact Radar

The Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar is a visual tool to quickly relay
Gartner’s consensus position about how close an emerging technology is to reaching early
majority status in the market. Technology product managers can use the graphic in
support of their conversations with peers, developers and key stakeholders that influence
and control investment in new technologies.
The graphic is also supported with concise text to inform the reader on Gartner’s rationale
for the ratings applied to range and mass and the placement of emerging technologies
and trends within the Impact Radar. The document also offers recommendations to
product leaders that span issues such as talent sourcing, targeting key sectors and
prioritizing development resources and product/service features.
The Importance of Focusing on Early Majority Technology Maturity and Adoption
The principal objective of the Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar is to
identify the level of maturity of emerging technologies and tends to determine when these
technologies and trends move to early majority adoption. Early majority adoption is
characterized as proven, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies that require less
customization than early iterations of technology. Most importantly, the designation of
early majority means that the market for an emerging technology or trend maintains the
potential for innovation and evolution, whereas the mature majority adoption does not.
By identifying the time to early majority adoption and maturation, Gartner’s Emerging
Technologies and Trends Impact Radar offers a reference point for planning ahead of the
mature majority. In a mature majority market, growth is challenging, differentiation rarely
occurs and operating profit margin rates only decrease. By focusing on early majority
maturity, product leaders can better:
■ Plan an optimal approach to investment in emerging technologies and trends based

on time to impact (such as development, partnering, acquisition). Early majority
represents an environment that can support new development and market entry as
well as offering a competitive landscape that provides a variety of partners and
acquisition prospects.
■ Invest in emerging technologies and trends based on company/product revenue

growth requirements as well as mass and range considerations. Understanding
when an emerging technology and trend reaches the early majority determines when
a market’s total available market (TAM) is sufficient to meet revenue requirements
for market entry.

■ Invest in emerging technologies and trends based on company/product margin
requirements, as well as mass and range considerations. Understanding when an
emerging technology and trend reaches the early majority determines when online
program management (OPM) rates are sufficient to meet revenue requirements for
market entry.
Identifying the market opportunity by phase is a fundamental step to making an informed

decision as to whether to invest in emerging technologies and trends. The Emerging
Technologies and Trends Impact Radar framework offered in this research can guide
product managers by distilling mass and range and aligning those ratings against internal
KPIs. It is also important to point out that the Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact
Radar is fundamentally different to the Hype Cycle.
Though some emerging technologies and trends may reside on both the Emerging
Technologies and Trends Impact Radar and the Hype Cycle, the analysis is differentiated
from Gartner’s Hype Cycle assessments in three meaningful ways:
■ Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radars are written for technology and
service providers, not technology adopters.
■ Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radars assess what is real — regardless
of existing hype.
■ Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radars focus on how far a technology
lies from early majority adoption to assist technology leaders in deciding when and
how to factor it into their product planning.

Acronym Key and Glossary Terms
AI artificial intelligence
COTS commercial off-the-shelf
FTE full-time equivalent
GDD growing degree days
GPS global positioning system
KPI key performance indicator
MEC multiaccess edge computing
ML machine learning
NDVI normalized difference vegetation index
OEE overall equipment effectiveness
OEM original equipment manufacturer
OPM online program management
OT operational technology
PET potential evapotranspiration
POC proof of concept
REG2 regrowth
ROI return on investment
TAM total available market
TCO total cost of ownership
TEE total equipment efficiency
TOL1 plant tolerance to defoliation
UN United Nations
UV ultraviolet

Evidence
Gartner’s coverage of agriculture as a subsector within manufacturing and natural
resources is emergent. Currently, most efforts have focused on forecasts relating to
solutions for the impacts of IoT design patterns and architectures in agriculture.
In addition to Gartner’s IoT forecast, multiple publicly available resources were used,
including:
■ OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2020-2029, Food and Agriculture Organization

(FAO).
■ ICT in Agriculture (Updated Edition): Connecting Smallholders to Knowledge,

Networks, and Institutions, The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository.
■ The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020, Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO).
■ The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020, Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO).
■ Agricultural Robotics: The Future of Robotics Agriculture, UK Robotics and

Autonomous Systems (RAS) Network.
■ The 1st Agriculture-Vision Challenge: Methods and Results, arXivLabs.
■ Deep Learning in Agriculture: A Survey, arXivLabs.
■ Computer Vision With Deep Learning for Plant Phenotyping in Agriculture: A Survey,
arXivLabs.
■ arXiv:2001.09786, Artificial Intelligence for Digital Agriculture at Scale: Techniques,

Policies, and Challenges
■ Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Smart Agriculture: Applications, Requirements and

Challenges, arXivLabs.
■ Group Decision Support for Agriculture Planning by a Combination of Mathematical

Model and Collaborative Tool, arXivLabs.

For the creation of this report, Gartner also relied on Pitchbook data to understand various
private investments relating to emergent, innovation vendors that focus on product
development for agricultural enterprises or to effect change and impact in the agricultural
ecosystem.
Note 1: Emerging Categories of Precision Agriculture Solutions

Farm Monitoring and Management
Farm monitoring and management acquires sensor data across all aspects of growing in
terms of crop state, health and related operational conditions to control production
remotely from any internet-enable mobile device. Growers can check soil conditions (or
water for aquaculture), control irrigation and harvesting equipment, or control livestock
feed levels in real time from any internet-enabled device. Advanced analytics identify
potential equipment and infrastructure failures for proactive remediation.
Increasingly, the software is expanding to integrate more business-side capabilities to

create and capture operational and process records that contribute to decision making for
improved farm operations. Such capabilities fuse information with monitoring of crops,
physical plant and assets with farm processes such as preventative maintenance, soil
and animal testing, visual inspection cadences and scheduling.
The multisector ecosystem that supports agricultural-related markets is likely the best
example of the need and the value of combining organically generated data with data
from a diverse array of generators and providers. IoT sensor data, weather service feeds,
data feeds from farming cooperatives and local universities relating to pest infestations
help farm management systems provide better decision support, advise with better
prescriptions and to make improved operational decisions.
Ultimately, operational visibility, analytics and decision support require sufficient reporting
and visualization capabilities to ensure knowledge transfer, historical perspective and
inferencing.
Virtual FTEs

Robots in growing environments are machines designed to execute a few tasks
autonomously. Most noteworthy is the use of robots among arable crops where robots are
used to reduce the environmental impact of pesticides. These robots use computer vision
to identify weeds and unwanted plants among early crops and either use nonchemical
approaches to “weeding” or use “microdosing” of pesticides rather than board-based
applications to the entirety of the growing area. Similarly, a range of unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs), or “drones,” are used by growers to reduce the costs and time to identify
areas for sowing, seeding and spraying.
As robots and drones are generally purpose-built machinery to support a single, or a range
of actions for a process, their efficacy is largely built upon the use of vision (including
spectral analyses) and sound (including language) to provide significant insight and
decision support relating to fertilization, pest management and harvesting.
Vertical and Glasshouse Farming

Vertical and glasshouse farming are climatic controlled-environments for plant growth.
Vertical farming is a practice that maximizes growth potential by creating stacked layers
of plants (vertical). Vertical farming generally uses soilless techniques such as
hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics. This solution offering is unique as it generally
bundles infrastructure, such as grow rooms or buildings, with integrated IT and OT. Some
vertical farming solutions do offer products for after-market enablement.
Digital Extension Services

Traditionally, agricultural extension services are programmatic approaches to knowledge
transfer to growers about farming practices based on scientific research and aggregated
experience. Most agricultural extension is organized and executed by universities, farming
cooperatives, and governmental and nongovernmental organizations. Areas of education
and support span growing practices, go-to-market disciplines and general business
information.
Gartner believes the extension service bureau will radically change over the next few
years. Once a hyperlocal and face-to-face exchange will transform into data-centric and
analytical services. Partnerships and joint ventures between farmers, universities,
businesses (for example, chemicals, fertilizers, seeds), including precision agriculture
vendors, will supplement legacy extension services.

Given the criticality of meeting yield requirements around the world, agricultural extension
services will quickly become a series of open and closed digital platforms that connect
growers with agricultural constituencies such as chemical and seed providers,
governmental regulators, food processors, and retailers. The large amount of private
capital inflows into precision agriculture and adjacent requirements such as, data
brokerage for insight, financial services for equipment and resource loans and crop and
livestock insurance, and biotechnology for plant breeding, gene editing, biologicals or
microbiome research will create more valuable insight and information to create a “digital
thread” from farm to table and derisk the yield.
The initial challenge will become balancing the societal benefit of digital extension
services while supporting some form of financial gain for businesses to fuel ongoing
innovation. Regional private-public partnerships (PPP) between entities such as
organizations within local governments, the World Bank, and private charitable
foundations will likely become the first form of digital extension services.
Note 2: List of Precision Agriculture Companies in Emerging and

Maturing Economies
Table 2 shows a list of precision agriculture companies in emerging and maturing
economies.

Table 1: List of Precision Agriculture Companies in Emerging and Maturing Economies
(Enlarged table in Appendix)
Source: Gartner (November 2020)
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Now 1 to 3 Years 3 to 6 Years 6 to 8 Years
Advanced Computer Vision AI Implementation and Operations IoT Platforms Distributed Ledger
Services
Edge AI Smart Spaces Fully Autonomous Driving
Intelligent Applications Product Servitization
Smart Robots
Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 1A of 3A

Table 1: List of Precision Agriculture Companies in Emerging and Maturing Economies
Company Description Country (HQ)
Agremo Software to determine health and condition of Serbia

crops and land status, as well as health based on
aerial imagery. Enables farmers to count plants
and to detect weeds, diseases, pests and water
stress.
Agroscan Software to determine health and condition of Ecuador

crops and land status, as well as health based on
aerial imagery. Enables farmers to count plants
and to detect weeds, diseases, pests and water
stress.
Arpac Drones designed to provide spraying to control Brazil

pests and diseases.
Atilze A set of hardware and software to provide value Malaysia

across various arable crops, livestock and
aquaculture.
CityFarm Malaysia Urban vertical farming systems and digital Malaysia

extension services.
CultYvate Farm cultivation platform intended to increase India

crop yield and quality.
Inceres Technology systems to provide soil analysis, in- Brazil

field monitoring service, and the creation of digital
extension platforms for ecosystem interaction.
Instacrops Software platform that combines IoT sensor data Chile

and advanced analytics to provide actionable
farming “prescriptions.”
Mertani Software platform that combines IoT sensor data Indonesia

and advanced analytics to provide actionable
farming “prescriptions.”
M-Farm M-Farm connects small farmers with various Kenya

urban and export markets via SMS and a web-
based marketplace.
MimosaTEK System of sensors, controller, and software to Vietnam

monitor in-field conditions for efficient and
effective irrigation.
SenzMate Software and hardware to determine health and Sri Lanka

condition of crops and land status, as well as
health based on aerial imagery. Enables farmers to
count plants and to detect weeds, diseases, pests
and water stress.
UjuziKilimo Software and hardware to determine health and Kenya

condition of crops and land status.
Source: Gartner (November 2020)

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Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar:

Emerging technologies in the precision agriculture market combine

■ Precision agriculture is a coalescing set of artiﬁcial intelligence (AI)- and IoT-centric

■ The precision agriculture market is likely to experience a wave of emerging

Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 1 of 44

■ Develop a broader educational and inﬂuence approach by focusing outreach across

Strategic Planning Assumptions

Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 2 of 44

The Impact Radar for Precision Agriculture

Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 3 of 44

3. Begin formulating a response to the technology or trend’s evolution

Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 4 of 44

Table 1: Emerging Technologies in Precision Agriculture Based on Time to Adoption

Now 1 to 3 Years 3 to 6 Years 6 to 8 Years

Advanced AI Implementation IoT Platforms Distributed Ledger

Edge AI Smart Spaces Fully Autonomous

Emerging Technologies and Trends Radar Proﬁles

Analysis by: Danielle Casey and Eric Goodness

Description: Advanced computer vision (CV) refers to the application of AI on video

Range: Now (0 to 1 Years)

Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 5 of 44

Mass: Very High

Advanced CV is critical business technology to optimize and transform the agricultural

Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 6 of 44

■ Differentiate your advanced CV roadmap by developing high-value, crop-/animal-

■ Accelerate advanced CV adoption by pushing solutions through nontraditional (to

Venture Capital Growth Insights: Computer Vision

Video Analytics Functionality Spectrum: Competitive Advantage Lies in Basic

Analysis by: Eric Goodness and Danielle Casey

Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 7 of 44

Range: Now (0 to 1 Year)

In addition to the AI techniques used to create value, edge AI represents an emerging

Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 8 of 44

Mass: Very High

The development of edge AI solutions by cloud service providers invigorated interest by

■ Manufacturers of farm machinery and infrastructure offering products “as a service”

■ Telecommunications providers leveraging their “edge-centric”‘ expertise to provide

Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 9 of 44

■ Partner with service providers focused on the agricultural ecosystem by supplying

■ Create a robust indirect channel to market by working with manufacturers seeking to

Analysis by: Alys Woodward and Eric Goodness

Description: Intelligent applications (IA) are enterprise business applications with

Sample Providers: Artemis, AgriWebb, Conservis, CropZilla, Farm(x), Phytech, Stellapps

Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 10 of 44

Traditional farm monitoring and management applications focused on the capabilities to

■ Tracking of soil, animal aquaculture or forestry conditions.

■ Actuate irrigation and harvesting equipment.

■ State and conditions of storage tanks, elevators, or holding pens or weirs.

The software is increasingly expanding to integrate more business-side capabilities to

Gartner, Inc. | G00724613 Page 11 of 44

Mass: Very High

■ Prescriptions for soil amendments, pesticides, or chemical fertilizer applications

■ Estimation of (ﬂood) inundation

■ Phenology of crops and animals (pollination, estrus, leaf emergence)

■ Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)

■ Quantify plant loss of biomass (TOL1, REG2)

■ Simulation of weather impact