How automation can help increase farmers’ incomes

The agricultural sector is consistently faced with huge workloads related to various metrics and processes. These include monitoring plant health, livestock welfare, and soil conditions; farmers also have to keep track of yields, finances, and repayment of various agricultural loans. On top of that, the current world population of 7.96 billion people has increased the demand for agricultural supplies worldwide, adding to increased pressure.

In this scenario, automation has been emerging as a boon for farmers. Now, they can automate farm management for better planning and outcome predictions. There are many cases of automation in farming, ranging from price analysis, inventory management, improved accounting, etc. All of these result in a maximised yield and enhanced efficiency and productivity. This can potentially increase the demand for agricultural machinery finance programs. In fact, a few agricultural equipment finance companies, like NAFA, have come forward to help farmers achieve their goals.

Further, with a projected global population reaching up to 9.7 billion people by 2050, a 70% increase in agricultural production will be needed to serve the world’s nutritional needs. It aids the need of agricultural finance companies globally.

Farmer incomes could be significantly increased by adopting automation. So, let us take a look at automation’s benefits and ways it boosts farmers’ income.

 

Benefits of automation in farming

Though automation might be intimidating to some farmers, it has many benefits. It is a misconception that automation can take away farmers’ jobs, but in actuality, it makes them highly productive and efficient. Let’s check a few of its benefits:

● Improved quality  

It is possible to boost overall quality analysis processes by implementing automated grading and sorting systems. The use of RPA can eliminate errors and enhance response time. Better stability can be achieved as RPA can also handle unstructured data.

● Increased productivity

Automation reduces the requirement for manual labour. Thus, production processes run almost non-stop. Increased access to agricultural finance corporation loans has indirectly increased productivity, allowing more farmers to invest in automation.

● Robust risk management 

Automation enables continuous task monitoring at scale both efficiently and cost-effectively. The software uses AI and ML technologies to maintain high data accuracy. Thus, automated tasks are less prone to human errors resulting in overall improved risk management.

● High human performance

The majority of repetitive tasks can be automated, allowing workers to devote their full attention to other critical farm-related tasks.

 

How do farmers earn more with automation?

With automation, farmers can earn a better income in the following ways:

● Reduced farming cost

It is a well-known fact that agricultural labour is expensive. As per NewBean Capital and Dr Kozai, around 26% to 40% of production cost is dedicated to indoor farming labour. The need for traditional manual work and plant science adds to high expenses. However, companies like NAFA have been helping farmers tackle these issues by providing needed financial help.

With the inclusion of robotics and automation in the farming processes, farmers can cut a significant amount of costs and boost efficiency. With agricultural automation, farmers get the facilities to allocate time better, where less time is given to routine tasks and more focus is given to value-based tasks.

● Climate-resilient farming

Farmers can earn income even under climate variabilities if they take an automated CRA (Climate-resilient agriculture) approach. It includes the use of available natural resources sustainably through automated livestock and crop production systems. Digitised livestock systems use multiple farming equipment to attain higher productivity—for example, plantation or sowing equipment. Furthermore, the affordable purchase of machines made possible by the agriculture equipment finance offerings helps farmers deal with adverse climate events.

● Solve Labour shortage

38% of farmers say they face difficulty finding qualified labour, while 30% can’t meet their temporary labour requirement quickly. Due to this, many farmers are adapting to less labour-intensive crops. However, with the harvest robots, repetitive tasks can be easily automated. Thus, the farmers would be able to save a huge part of their income with the remarkable labour cost and manpower reduction assisting labour shortage.

A strawberry robot harvester can perform work of 30 labours and potentially deal with a 25-acre farm area in just 3 days. Fully autonomous vehicles and farm equipment are expected to be launched soon; agricultural finance companies are all set to support farmers in the purchase and implementation of such equipment.

 

Bottom line

Though farm automation is in its infancy; it can transform agriculture in multiple ways helping farmers to earn more. Moreover, agricultural equipment finance companies support the broader adoption of such advancements by providing affordable agricultural loans to farmers. Though automation technology is becoming more cutting-edge, the human element will remain fundamental in farm management. But, with high productivity levels, better work efficiency, and quick task deliveries with automated equipment in place, farmers can focus on approaching better revenues.