Page 11 - Digital Agriculture: A Standards Snapshot

Digital Agriculture: A Standards Snapshot

Cultivating Change: Towards Standards for Digital Agriculture

The agricultural sector faces a series of multi-faceted challenges, encompassing environmental,
economic, social, dimensions. Although there has been a global increase in overall food
production, undernourishment affects between 713 and 757 million people (8.9 and 9.4 percent
of the global population respectively) people faced hunger in 2023. Furthermore, around 14
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percent of the world’s food (valued at $400 billion annually) continues to be wasted.

Therefore, ensuring access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food for all, while reducing food
wastage remain major challenges, especially in view of a growing global population.
Emerging technologies are increasingly being used in agriculture, including smart greenhouses,
livestock monitoring systems, agricultural robots, and precision farming. The automation of
tasks to related to planting, sowing, tilling, feeding, and harvesting often rely on technologies
like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT).

In order for these technologies to work in a complementary manner for a growing number
of agrifood-ecosystems, interoperability driven by standardization is essential, allowing for
seamless integration and enhancing agricultural production processes. Standardization
within this domain would also help in facilitating scalability, enabling solutions to be adapted
across different regions and types of farming, thereby accelerating the adoption of emerging
technologies. Additionally, it would help maintain data security and privacy, fostering trust
among users.

Standardization in digital agriculture promotes innovation and collaboration, providing a solid
foundation for sustainable and profitable farming practices.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for
digital technologies has been at the forefront of technical standardization related to emerging
technologies including AI across various verticals. Furthermore, the Food and Agriculture
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Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in its role as the specialized agency of the United
Nations for leading international efforts to defeat global hunger, helps countries to eliminate
hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.

Combining their expertise and to prevent duplication of efforts, ITU together with FAO created
the Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) for Digital Agriculture
(FG-AI4A) in October 2021, to lay the foundation for standardization and explore future
prospects in the context of digital agriculture.

This Report will trace the journey of this Focus Group highlighting its key achievements,
outcomes and meetings held.

1 The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024.
2 ITU serves as an international standards developing organization (SDO).

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