Market Introduction

The global smart agriculture market was valued at USD 22 billion in 2024 and grew at a CAGR of 13% from 2025 to 2034. The market is expected to reach USD 74.68 billion by 2034. The increasing need to achieve global food security will drive the growth of the global smart agriculture market.

Smart agriculture also known as precision agriculture or digital farming is a game-changer in the traditional farming techniques as it involves the use of advanced technology and data-driven solutions to transform agriculture practices into an efficient one. It makes use of the latest technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics, drones, remote sensing, and robotics to enable increased productivity, efficiency, and sustainability of farming operations. Smart agriculture is essentially focused on increasing the accuracy of monitoring and managing crops, soil, water, and livestock, to optimize the production and reduce the wastage of resources and effects on the environment. The fields can be equipped with sensors that continuously monitor the moisture of soils, nutrients and temperature as well as health of crops, which allows farmers to make informed decisions regarding irrigation, application of fertilizers and controlling pests and making harvests. Such data-based approach minimizes trial and error and interventions become timely and site specific as opposed to generalized methods resulting in better overall crop quality and quantity. Moreover, drones and satellite imagery would show the farmers aerial images of their fields, allowing them to locate pest-infested, sick, or nutrient-deficient areas as soon as possible. Robotics and automated machineries come in to help in a labour-intensive process such as planting, weeding and harvesting, lessening the work and the cost of operation. Smart farming also helps to attain sustainability, through better use of the resources and less use of chemicals. Also, data analytics platforms combine data to present predictive data like weather conditions, growth patterns of crops, trends in the market, etc. and provide a way to reduce risks through better planning.

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Recent Developments

• A strategic subgrant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through the Africa Dryland Crop Improvement Network (ADCIN) has significantly transformed the Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI).  Created in August 2023 by CIMMYT through its Dryland Crops Program (DCP), ADCIN is a cooperative network that brings together more than 200 experts from more than 17 sub-Saharan African nations.  Its goal is to establish a vibrant and long-lasting network for the development and distribution of better dryland agricultural varieties in the area.  ADCIN works to expedite smallholder farmers' access to improved crop varieties by utilising the combined experience of its diverse members.

Market Dynamics

Drivers

Food security and agricultural sustainability – the pressure on the agricultural stakeholders to yield more output with less means is eminent and therefore a serious drive towards optimizing the farm inputs and minimizing waste is on-going. Smart agriculture provides tools and technology through which farmers can increase the productivity of crops using less amount of resources-water, fertilizers and pesticides. It is a part of resource optimization that keeps increasing profitability and leads to sustainable farming. Also, the motivation to use smart technologies comes down to the need to minimize the overhead expenses. Use of robotics and machines in automation of labour-intensive activities such as plantation, irrigation and harvesting can reduce labour costs and improve precision. The increasing ease of availability and cost of technologies like sensors, drones, GPS, and analytics that use AI drive the use of these technologies into routine operations of farms. These devices can monitor the condition of soil, weather, crop life, and location and activity of pests in real-time, and data-driven decisions can be improved to reduce the risks and increase productivity. The other important internal factor is the rising emphasis on crop and soil health management. With the help of digital technologies, farmers will know about the problem in time and will be able to make adjustments in time and, therefore, in this case, provide higher quality and increased performance.

Restraints

Economic, technical and behavioural factors – The vital obstacle is that smart agriculture technologies could have the high cost of initial investment. Instruments like IoT gadgets, sensors, drones, and precision equipment can have a considerable initial price which puts small and marginal farmers who use limited funds out of reach. The absence of the returns in the shortest term can demoralize adoption even in cases in which the benefits are clearly visible long-term. The other significant limitation is a low level of technical skills and digital comprehension among farmers, especially in developing and rural areas. A good number of farmers do not have experience using hi-tech gadgets, reading data on sensors, moving through digital catalogues. This lack of competencies and training makes smart agriculture tools less useful and attractive. Also, the conservative mentality and the adverse dependence on the established farming practices are the cause of resistances to change. The problem is that farmers can be cautious about new technologies, particularly, when it looks complicated or un-tried in the local conditions.

Opportunities

Environmental regulations and favourable government support – Among the major stimuli is the fact that the world population is growing exponentially hence putting pressure on food consumption. Conventional farming techniques can no longer support this increasing demand in a sustainable manner hence the need to incorporate superior agricultural technologies that guarantee high yields by requiring less resources. Moreover, the unstable climate and environment have worsened the situation with agriculture and one of its prerogatives is to develop technologies that could help to increase the resilience, track the environmental status, and lessen the dependence upon the natural phenomena. Ambitious government practices and friendlier policies are also important in fostering smart agriculture. The countries are giving out subsidies, tax exemptions, and funding programs that will motivate the farmers on spreading out the use of precision farming tools in large volumes. The other external influence is the fast-growing digital infrastructure especially in the rural regions.

Segment Analysis

Regional segmentation analysis

The regions analyzed for the market include North America, Europe, South America, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa. North America emerged as the most significant global smart agriculture market, with a 40% market revenue share in 2024.

North America takes a leading position in the smart agriculture market globally, and this dominance is explained by the high level of the agricultural infrastructure, the active exploitation of modern technologies, and a sufficient level of government and institutional support. The farmers in this region are known as an early adopter of technology because of abundant resources, improved internet access in the countryside, and the possibility to invest money in new solutions. Among the most important factors that have led to the domination of North America is the availability of many dominant agri-tech organizations and institutions that have continued to innovate and develop the latest products that suit the large scale and mechanized agriculture that characterizes the region. Moreover, farmers in North America have a rather large area to work with, so it is possible to implement smart technologies in agriculture in a more monetarily efficient and economically feasible manner. Another factor promoting smart agriculture is government efforts, including direct subsidies, grants and funding of research organizations, including USDA. The high awareness rate, presence of superior infrastructural facilities and progressive distribution mediums have enhanced the infiltration of smart farming technologies in numerous types of farming like precision farming, livestock tracking and smart greenhouse. Consequently, North America is still the leader in the worldwide market by becoming a model in terms of innovation, adoption, and incorporation of sustainable, efficient, and technologically enhanced agricultural practices.

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• An international research team headed by Professor Sureshkumar Balasubramanian from the Monash School of Biological Sciences has disproved long-held beliefs about how plants sense and react to temperature changes in a study that was published in the esteemed journal Science.  The scientists discovered that temperature sensing in plants is accomplished by a complex, decentralised network of proteins and biological pathways, defying the conventional wisdom that plants rely on a single "thermometer-like" system akin to that of animals.  With climate extremes like heatwaves, droughts, and unseasonal flooding becoming more frequent, precision breeding has the potential to completely transform how farmers choose and manage crops.

Offering Segment Analysis

The offering segment is divided into hardware, software and services. The hardware segment dominated the market, with a market share of around 46% in 2024. The global smart agriculture market is dominated by hardware segment mainly because of its significant role of facilitating real time data collection, automation and precision during farming. The bottom layer of smart agricultural technologies consists of such hardware elements as sensors, GPS devices, drones, cameras, automated irrigation systems, and control units. They are necessary to detect soil humidity, weather, crop, animals, and machinery performance. The growing need of data-based decision-making in agriculture has largely contributed to an increase in the use of hardware since it is the major tool of collecting field-level data. Specifically, sensors are widely used in farms to identify temperature, humidity, soil pH, and nutrient levels, enabling an accurate treatment of the water, fertilizers, and pesticides. In the same way, drones and GPS-guided machinery make it possible to carry out aerial surveillance and mapping of crops and operate machinery automatically, which saves on human work and raises efficiency. There has been a significant increase in the use of physical machines due to lack of labour and need to adopt sustainable practices particularly in the developed economies of farming. More importantly, the falling prices of hardware components, its embedded systems, and compatibility with wireless connection technology, such as IoT and Bluetooth, have given access to such tools to medium and large farms. There is also high investment and innovation by the manufacturers on the hardware part to increase the durability, accuracy and automation facilities. Compared to software and services, hardware may be the simplest way to go digital in agriculture so that it plays the key role at early stages of adoption. This is the pivotal role it plays, and the increasing need in the field-level automation and real-time monitoring, which serves as an additional argument in favour of hardware segment leading the smart agriculture market.

• The 2025 Sustainable Modern Agriculture Through Rural Technopreneurship (SMART) program was started by Sarawak Skills in partnership with the Ministry of Food Industry, Commodity, and Regional Development.  This program, which is a component of the Rural ICT Training and Development Program, aims to empower rural communities by introducing them to digital business and smart agriculture.

Agriculture type Segment Analysis

The agriculture type segment is divided into precision farming, livestock monitoring, smart greenhouses and aquaculture. The precision farming segment dominated the market, with a market share of around 38% in 2024. Precision farming has a leading position in the worldwide market of smart agriculture because it is applicable everywhere, gives good returns on investments, considerably increases productivity, and sustainability. Advance technologies employed in this approach are GPS, GIS, IoT sensors, drones, and data analytics to control, track, and measure variability in fields at a micro level. Precision farming also enables site-specific crop management which uses less water, fertilizers and pesticides that waste or have little or no environmental effect and increases crop yields because farmers can apply these substances only where necessary. Flexibility in being utilized with many crops and geographies is one of the major functionalities that has made precision farming take a dominant role. Whether row crops such as wheat and maize or high-value horticultural crops, precision agriculture technologies are coming to bear to tune up every detail of the production process - seed selection and planting, irrigation, and harvesting. This has in turn been boosted by the growing availabilities of low-cost sensors, GPS enabled hardware and farm management software, especially in areas with well-developed agriculture infrastructure such as North America and Europe. Furthermore, the increasing worry of resource depletion, climatic variation and escalating input prices have rendered precision farming an appealing ploy to the big commercial farms as well as to the medium-sized enterprising firms. With the current changes taking place in the world in a shift towards more environmentally responsible and data-oriented agriculture, precision farming stands out to be at the forefront, as it is the foundation of smart agriculture. The fact that it is versatile, improves efficiency and has record of enhancing profitability cements its market dominance.

Application Segment Analysis

The application segment is divided into field mapping & crop scouting, irrigation management, yield monitoring, weather tracking & forecasting, inventory management, farm labour management and financial planning. The field mapping & crop scouting segment dominated the market, with a market share of around 33% in 2024. These technologies imply the usage of satellite images, drones, Global Positioning Systems, and terrestrial sensors to gather real-time information about different field conditions such as soil heterogeneity, moisture content, crop development cycle, pest presence, and disease outbreaks. The establishment of this segment is highly accredited to the fact that it is the backbone of precision agriculture. Field mapping enables site specific management since it determines the dynamics in soil fertility and other environmental rations, thereby enabling farmers to use fertilizers, water and pesticides only where there is the necessity. On the same note, crop scouting can also lead to the identification of plant stress symptoms, nutrient deficiency or pest infestation early enough before the problem increases. Besides ensuring healthy crops this also leads to increased quality and output. Mapping and scouting tools have become more precise due to technological challenges, drone imagery, and machine learning opportunity. In addition, the rising cost effectiveness of these technologies has now exposed them to a wider spectrum of farmers even to the developing economies. It also makes decision making and planning to be smoother through their integration with farm management software. Field mapping and crop scouting remain the most popular and effective smart agriculture application and they also play a vital role in growing productivity, decreasing waste, and making precision farming activities possible.

Some of the Key Market Players

• Deere & Company
• Trimble Inc.
• AGCO Corporation
• Raven Industries, Inc.
• Topcon Positioning Systems, Inc.
• Bayer CropScience AG
• CNH Industrial N.V.
• AG Leader Technology
• TeeJet Technologies
• PrecisionHawk
• Hexagon Agriculture
• CropX Technologies

Report Description