“Digital twins offer a transformative approach to agriculture by enabling farmers to closely monitor crops, soil, and weather, ensuring optimized irrigation and resource use. This leads to cost savings and heightened productivity, enhancing the sector's sustainability,” says Attaran. This information then helps the farmer improve management decisions like crop rotations plans, anticipated over- or under-production, and ways to address shortfalls in production.
Today, the United States is one of the world’s leading producers of food and agriculture products. With more people to feed, a higher demand for agricultural products, and increased concern over food quality and safety, the agriculture industry is under significant economic pressure to increase productivity and efficiency while maintaining profitability. To meet these challenges, researchers note that the industry needs new technologies, techniques, and information — such as digital twinning — to improve their yields and manage their resources more efficiently.
“In essence, digital twins in agriculture offer a holistic approach to farm management, resource use, predictive insights, and environmental adaptability,” Attaran says, adding how saving time and costs will improve sustainability and attract higher premiums for produce.
Researchers explain that farming processes are complex and dynamic because they depend on natural conditions. This technology, Attaran adds, aids in predicting weather patterns and understanding the long-term implications of climate change while highlighting stress points in agricultural systems caused by factors like soil quality or pollution.
“By analyzing real-time data from digital twins, farmers can foresee and react to various challenges, such as potential crop diseases, yield expectations, or equipment malfunctions,” Attaran says.
Digital twins also improve traceability and transparency in agriculture’s supply chain management by helping farmers anticipate disruptions, identify optimum transportation/logistics routes, and create contingency plans. While there is room for future research on digital twins, the technology’s future is looking bright. Farmers are open to innovation in agriculture technology to optimize their returns and minimize financial risk, according to a McKinsey & Company article, but the adoption of these emerging tools remains slow.
“Adopting digital twin solutions propels agriculture into a new era of digital efficiency and sustainable profitability,” Attaran says.
Source : bryant.edu