Opportunities and Challenges for Big Data in Agricultural and Environmental Analysis

Alfons Weersink, Evan Fraser (), David Pannell, Emily Duncan () and Sarah Rotz ()
Additional contact information
Evan Fraser: Arrell Food Institute and Department of Geography, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada
Emily Duncan: Department of Geography, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada
Sarah Rotz: Department of Geography, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada

Annual Review of Resource Economics, 2018, vol. 10, issue 1, 19-37

Abstract: Agriculture stands on the cusp of a digital revolution, and the same technologies that created the Internet and are transforming medicine are now being applied in our farms and on our fields. Overall, this digital agricultural revolution is being driven by the low cost of collecting data on everything from soil conditions to animal health and crop development along with weather station data and data collected by drones and satellites. The promise of these technologies is more food, produced on less land, with fewer inputs and a smaller environmental footprint. At present, however, barriers to realizing this potential include a lack of ability to aggregate and interpret data in such a way that it results in useful decision support tools for farmers and the need to train farmers in how to use new tools. This article reviews the state of the literature on the promise and barriers to realizing the potential for Big Data to revolutionize agriculture.

Keywords: digital revolution; precision agriculture; economics; policy; Big Data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q16 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-100516-053654 (application/pdf)
Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:anr:reseco:v:10:y:2018:p:19-37

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.annualreviews.org/action/ecommerce

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Annual Review of Resource Economics from Annual Reviews Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by http://www.annualreviews.org ().