There are more humans alive on Earth right now than ever before—7.3 billion—and that number is still growing, with UN projections that it will reach 9.7 billion by 2050. A population of this magnitude brings a lot of challenges, food production chief among them. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization predicts that we need to boost worldwide food production by 70 percent over the next several decades in order to feed the anticipated population of 2050.
Ramping up production to that degree isn’t easy, but the engineers and farmers of today are working together to create a technological solution: precision agriculture and the “smart farm.”
Agriculture is the oldest human industry, but it’s certainly no stranger to technological change. The industrial revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries replaced handheld tools and horse-drawn plows with gasoline engines and chemical fertilizers.
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