The Internet of Things and the Future of Farming

The Internet of Things -- the vision of a world brimming with communicating sensors and digital smarts -- occupies the peak of Gartner’s most recent “hype cycle.” And a report released by the McKinsey Global Institute laid out the potential multitrillion-dollar payoff from the emerging technology. At a two-day workshop in San Jose (CA) hosted by the National Science Foundation and the National Consortium for Data Science, a few dozen academics, corporate technologists and government officials met and mostly wrestled with the thorny technical and policy issues that must be addressed if the potential of the Internet of Things is to be realized. They were working to come up with a research agenda to make practical progress on challenges like security, privacy and standards.

Lance Donny, founder of an agricultural technology start-up, OnFarm Systems, gave a wide-ranging talk that laid out the history of farming and presented the case for its data-driven future. Inexpensive sensors, cloud computing and intelligent software, he suggested, hold the potential to transform agriculture and help feed the world’s growing population. Venture capitalists seem to share some of Donny’s optimism. In the first half of 2015, venture investment in so-called agtech start-ups reached $2.06 billion in 228 deals, according to a study published by AgFunder, an equity crowdfunding platform for agricultural technology. The half-year total was close to the $2.36 billion raised in all of 2014, which was a record year.