How will the market for agricultural IoT applications evolve in 2025 and beyond?

Precision agriculture is about managing variations in the field to increase crop yield, raise productivity and reduce consumption of agricultural inputs. While solutions such as auto-guidance and machine monitoring and control via onboard displays today are mainstream technologies in the agricultural industry, telematics and variable rate technology (VRT) are not yet widely adopted. Most major agricultural equipment manufacturers have initiatives related to precision agriculture, although strategies vary markedly.

Leading providers of precision agriculture solutions include Deere & Company, AGCO via its joint venture with Trimble, Topcon Positioning Systems, Hexagon, and CNH Industrial through its subsidiary Raven Industries. Other significant vendors are Ag Leader Technology, Kubota and CLAAS Group. The agricultural drone market has recently emerged as a rapidly growing area in precision farming. The market is led by DJI with an installed base of more than 300,000 agricultural drones. Other important players are Draganfly, AgEagle, XAG and Beijing TT Aviation Technology. Industry players that provide data-oriented applications and agronomic services include Bayer's Climate LLC, Syngenta, Farmers Edge and BASF.

The market for in-field sensor systems can be divided into three segments: environmental monitoring, pest monitoring and water management. These solutions typically incorporate wireless connectivity, data logging, cameras and sensors that record measurements of environmental parameters. Semios (Almanac) is the largest vendor in the space by far with an installed base of over 500,000 sensor nodes, followed by Pessl Instruments and Davis Instruments with estimated installed bases of around 80,000 and 50,000 devices respectively.

The top specialised providers of integrated soil moisture monitoring solutions comprise CropX, Hortau and WiseConn. Remote irrigation control solutions are offered by the largest OEMs of central-pivot and drip irrigation systems including Valmont Industries with its Valley Irrigation brand, Lindsay Corporation with its Zimmatic brand and Netafim.

Precision livestock farming technologies are mainly applied to the husbandry of dairy cattle, poultry and pigs. Consolidation and growth of dairy farms have resulted in larger herds per farmer, which makes manual observations challenging. Bodymounted sensor systems together with herd management software are used to achieve satisfactory herd health and timely insemination when a cow is in oestrous.

A majority of the leading dairy equipment OEMs including GEA Group, Lely and BouMatic partner with specialised companies to provide advanced sensor technology for herd management. The world's largest dairy equipment manufacturer DeLaval offers its in-house developed activity monitoring system along with its milking and dairy farming infrastructure solutions. Other significant providers of precision livestock farming technologies include Afimilk, Farmnote, Nedap, Fullwood JOZ, smaXtec and Merck.

The analyst's outlook for the smart farming solution market is positive as agricultural production remains greatly underpenetrated by IoT technologies. The number of installed wireless devices for applications in agricultural production is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.6% from 26.5 million connections at the end of 2023 to 38.2 million connected devices by 2028. Cellular connections amounted to roughly 2 million at the end of 2023 and are expected to reach 4.1 million in 2028.

The main application areas for cellular communications comprise farm equipment telematics and in-field sensor systems. LPWA technologies are expected to achieve the highest growth rate and realise a significant market position in the remote monitoring and control segment. 802.15.4-based standards comprise the most employed wireless technology due to its wide adoption in dairy cow monitoring applications.