State of Food and Agriculture report

Why in the News?

Recently,  the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released the 2022 edition of the State of Food and Agriculture report.

Key Points:

• The report looked at how automation in our agrifood systems can contribute to achieving sustainable development goals. 

About Agriculture Automation (AA):

• Agriculture automation is the process of using various technological equipment to enhance and automate agricultural businesses.

Benefits of Agriculture Automation (AA):

• improve product quality and profitability in agriculture
• Increase resource-use efficiency
• Enhance environmental sustainability
• provide better working conditions and improved incomes
• Generate new entrepreneurship opportunities in rural areas. 
• Reduce food losses and improve product quality and safety. 

Challenges:

• Inaccessibility of automation deepens inequalities thereby affecting small-scale producers and marginalized groups such as youth and women. 
• Certain technologies – large motorized machinery – can also have negative environmental impacts due to monoculture and soil erosion. 
• It can lead to unemployment where rural labour is abundant and wages are low in agricultural automation. 
• There are wide disparities in the spread of automation between and within countries. 
  • For example, Japan had more than 400 tractors per 1,000 hectares of arable land, compared with just 0.4 in Ghana in 2005. 

Recommendations:

• Sustainable rental mechanisms are key for aiding mechanisation in regions with poor agri-automation.
• Policymakers should avoid subsidising automation in labour-abundant regions. 
• They should focus on creating an enabling environment for adopting automation.
• Social protection should be provided to the least skilled workers, who are more likely to lose their jobs during the transition.