Agriculture Problems And Technology Solutions To Them
Commercial agriculture operates at the intersection of environmental stewardship and business efficiency — a balance that’s becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. While combating agriculture problems from shifting weather patterns to soil health decline and water scarcity, growers face mounting pressure to produce more while protecting their natural resources. Labor shortages, regulatory requirements, and rising input costs additionally strain farming operations. Though these fundamental agriculture problems persist, integrating smart farming technologies and digital management platforms is transforming how growers approach these challenges. New solutions emerge regularly, offering data guidance to solve age-old and current agricultural issues.
What Are The Biggest Challenges In Agriculture?
Modern farmers confront a deluge of agricultural issues. Along with fighting the problems of soil degradation and biodiversity loss, they need to figure out how to adapt to more extreme weather events and changing growing conditions brought on to agriculture by climate change. Additionally, they need to satisfy evolving consumer preferences for higher-quality and more sustainable agriculture production. On top of the above problems, improving farm productivity and building resilience against different issues requires huge investments in agriculture equipment and adopting new technologies in a flash.
Some challenges in agriculture, like market fluctuations, trade policy issues, and demographic shifts in rural communities, extend beyond individual farmers’ influence, but most of the problems are within farmers’ control to address through on-farm actions.
What Are The Major Environmental Issues In Agriculture?
Climate change, pests, and crop diseases are the three most common environmental problems in agriculture. The stage of crop growth determines the risk and extent of these agricultural problems.
| Cultivation stage | Weather risks | Pest risks | Disease risks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preparation for sowing and sowing | High: inadequate moisture and low temperatures reduce the emergence rates | Low: rare pest activity | Low: unlikely before emergence |
| Emergence and vegetation | Medium: heavy rains/drought impede crop development | Medium: damage to young plants | Medium: active disease development under certain conditions |
| Yield formation | High: adverse weather threats significant yield decline | High: significant threat to future harvest | High: significant damage threat |
| Ripening and harvest | High: adverse weather threats significant harvest quality and quantity decline | Low: possible, but not significant damage | Low: possible, but not significant damage |
Harsh Weather Issues And Effects Of Climate Change
Weather problems cost agriculture players billions in lost crops each year. Unpredictable rain patterns and rising temperatures disrupt normal growing seasons and lower agriculture productivity. Many agriculture businesses spend extra money on irrigation, crop protection against weather-associated pests and diseases, and backup plans to handle weather risks.
Major weather problems faced by farmers today are:
- Drought (especially in water-deficient agriculture regions) depletes soil moisture reserves, which results in lower yields and poor fruit quality. The problem of aborted kernels is typical for drought stress in staple grains like corn and wheat. Talking numbers, moderate drought stress can reduce wheat yield by 50–60% .
- Hail can bruise fruits, shred leaves, and break branches, thus exposing plants to pest and disease problems. Often damaging crops beyond recovery, hail is a leading cause of insurance claims in the agriculture sector.
- Strong winds’ direct damage by tearing off leaves and fruits and indirect damage due to delayed farm works pose significant agriculture challenges. Flattened crops require additional passes with agriculture machinery and more time to harvest them.
- Waterlogging degrades soil, inhibits plant nutrient uptake, compromises root health, and disrupts crucial agriculture operations. Waterlogged soils also contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, which can further exacerbate climate change and cause even more issues in agriculture.
Pest And Disease Pressure
Pests and diseases rank among the most persistent issues facing modern agriculture. Aphid, mite, and beetle infestations can devastate yields if uncontrolled. These pests not only directly damage plants but also cause indirect problems in agriculture transmitting diseases as vectors. Fungal infections such as blight and rust pose an additional problem, reducing harvests by 10–23% globally each year .
As one of the biggest problems in agriculture, pests and diseases not only decrease yields, but also degrade crop quality. This forces agriculture producers to spend more on pesticides and fungicides to protect their harvests. The table below illustrates the increasing yield potential loss because of pests and diseases over time, underscoring the need for prompt intervention to solve these agricultural problems.
| Problem | 1 day, % | 2 days, % | 3 days, % | 4 days, % | 5 days, % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pests | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
| Diseases | 3 | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 |
Naturally, the earlier farmers recognize and respond to the agricultural issue, the larger yields they can harvest. Modern remote crop monitoring and precision agriculture platforms can not only detect problems at an early stage but also anticipate them.
Solving Environmental Problems With EOSDA Crop Monitoring
Protecting crops from water stress, pests, and diseases requires catching problems before they spread. The EOSDA Crop Monitoring system alerts agriculture producers when an infestation or heavy precipitation may occur. By showing where and when to act to solve farming problems, the system helps growers use less water and protective chemicals while keeping their fields healthy.
Timely Pesticide And Fungicide Applications Against Pest And Disease Problems
Pesticides and fungicides work best when applied at the right moment, before the problems establish a foothold and spread. Agriculture players must continuously monitor the situation to detect potential problems in advance. The Disease risk feature in EOSDA Crop Monitoring offers an easy way for threat monitoring: it alerts farmers to potential pest and disease issues in their crops to take preventative or early action. We estimate the likelihood of pest and disease problems for various crops (sugar cane, oil palm, corn, soybeans, and many others) by combining an accurate weather forecast for a certain field with the stage of plant growth.
Add an extra layer of agriculture issue monitoring with the Disease risk detection in the Global view. To activate the Risk Map layer, go to the Risk type selector and choose Disease risk from the list of available options. Color-coded areas in the field indicate no, low, medium, and high risk levels. The Disease risk feature offers solutions to pressing agricultural problems, allowing farmers to schedule fungicide treatments precisely when needed.
Prognosis And Preparation For Potential Drought And Flood Problems
To avoid water issues in agriculture, traditionally, growers have matched their crop selections with the inherent moisture properties of their fields. The problem is that because of climate change, the weather is now so unpredictable and harsh that this approach alone might fail. The solution to this agriculture problem lies in redesigning irrigation and drainage systems and adjusting their usage to current conditions.
EOSDA Crop Monitoring provides the tools to help irrigate more precisely and efficiently in the face of potential problems:
- historical weather trends with 5-year averages of precipitation, temperature, and many other weather parameters help understand the most typical water requirements in each of your fields;
- historical daily weather records dating back to 1979 for some fields help detect anomalies that do not align with broader trends;
- weather forecasts for up to 14 days with detailed and reliable field-specific data allow you to anticipate and prepare for weather problems, such as dry spells or heavy rains.
What Are The Major Farm Management Problems?
Running a successful agriculture business requires navigating a minefield of operational and management problems. Ensuring the timely completion of critical field work, preserving the health of farmland, and optimizing limited water resources are just a few of the operational challenges faced by farmers that can make or break an agriculture business.
One-Shot Field Operations Per Growing Season
Agriculture production operates on an unforgiving timeline where farmers get only one opportunity per season to execute their cultivation strategy correctly. Field interventions typically occur every 10–20 days. While there are planned operations, like sowing in a 2–4-week window, most operations demand a faster response based on field monitoring and emerging problems.
The stakes are particularly high in solving agriculture problems and taking crop protection measures. Pest, disease, and weed control require action within 1–3 days. These agriculture operations cannot be postponed or repeated if incorrect, as the damage to crops occurs rapidly and is often irreversible. Crop failure is a double problem: both the loss of the current investment and the inability to replant until the next growing season.
Lost Agricultural Land Quality Due To Poor Soil Management
When confronted with agriculture sustainability issues like decreasing field productivity, farmers’ first (and, unfortunately, frequently wrong) response is overcultivation and excessive chemical use. However, rather than increasing fertility, these agriculture practices actually deplete essential soil nutrients, reducing crop yields. Eroded topsoil exposes less fertile subsoil, further diminishing the land’s suitability for growing crops. The vicious cycle of agriculture problems persists as farmers use more fertilizers to maintain productivity, thereby compromising their profitability and soil health.
Severe Irrigation Problems In Water-Scarce Regions
Today, farmers struggle with the problem of insufficient water to properly irrigate their crops, particularly in arid regions. Insufficient watering stunts plant growth, leading to smaller and lower-quality agriculture yields. Whenever surface water is insufficient, farmers may have no option but to use groundwater, but this can exacerbate problems for farmers as groundwater levels decline over time.
Despite the numerous management and operational challenges facing agriculture, innovative solutions are now available for farmers to improve day-to-day field operations and boost overall crop productivity.
How EOSDA Crop Monitoring Help Farmers Solve Management Problems And Improve Field Operations
EOSDA Crop Monitoring allows agriculture producers to closely track their fields and quickly address farmers’ issues that could impact crop health and yields. With our satellite-based tools, you can stay on top of critical agriculture issues like maintaining sufficient soil moisture, fertilizing crops while preserving soil health, detecting disease outbreaks, and much more.
Accurate And Timely Field Monitoring
With EOSDA Crop Monitoring, you can closely track the growth and health issues of your crops. Over 10 in-built vegetation indices, including NDVI, NDRE, MSAVI, RECI, and NDMI, allow you to easily assess the situation in your fields and solve common problems faced by farmers anytime during the growing season. Get regular updates as Santinel-2 satellites pass over your fields every 3–5 days.
Need even more detail on the crop state and emerging problems? Upgrade to PlanetScope satellite imagery with daily updates at 3-meter resolution — three times sharper than Sentinel-2. Use this data to optimize your crop management and solve operational farming issues as fast as possible.
Variable Rate Application (VRA) Technology
Applying sufficient (rather than excessive) chemicals is the first step toward overcoming soil degradation and other productivity issues in the agriculture industry. Variable rate application technology, which accounts for specific crop needs, field terrain, and local issues enables the delivery of fertilizers, pesticides, and other agricultural inputs in sufficient quantities in each field zone. This means higher yields with less strain on the soil, surrounding ecosystem, and farmer’s wallet.
In EOSDA Crop Monitoring, you can observe which field areas may have nutrient problems and which have enough resources to thrive. Our Nitrogen VRA maps are built upon the most recent satellite image, giving you current data about the vegetation density (possibly low nitrogen needs) or scarcity (possibly high nitrogen needs). For phosphorus and potassium, the P&K VRA maps analyze your field’s historical productivity, identifying zones that consistently deliver high or low yields and thus vary in nutrient needs. These visual representations of your field’s vegetation state make it simple to create VRA scripts for use in agriculture machinery.
Field Activity Log
Keeping on top of field activities across multiple locations is a constant problem in agriculture. EOSDA’s Field activity log provides a centralized farm management solution for agriculture consultants and large-scale farmers. Its intuitive calendar-like interface displays all planned and completed tasks — from spraying to fungicide application to harvesting — in one unified view. You can easily filter and sort this information by crop, worker, operation type, or any custom group of criteria to identify issues, optimize resource allocation, and ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
In the Field activity log, quickly adjust operations to stay ahead of agriculture problems. To address the disease problems, add a task for fungicide application; to prevent heat stress issues from forecasted drought, plan additional irrigation. Managing either thousands of acres worldwide or a few smaller adjacent farmlands is no longer a problem, as the Field Activity Log gives you full visibility and control over your entire agriculture operation.
Moisture Need Monitoring And Irrigation Planning
Solving agricultural irrigation problems isn’t about watering more — it’s about watering smarter. EOSDA Crop Monitoring provides agriculture players with heat and precipitation forecasts, soil moisture data, and vegetation indices, painting a clear picture of the field’s moisture needs. For example, the normalized difference moisture index (NDMI) helps you understand which areas require more water and which might experience overwatering problems. With NDMI, you can detect water stress early and address the problem before it impacts productivity.
NDMI, NDVI, and some other vegetation indices can also be used as a base for variable rate irrigation (VRI) maps to water only moisture-deficient agriculture areas. Generate the NDMI-based VRI map in the EOSDA’s Map builder to divide your field into zones with varying water needs, thus preventing deficiency issues, conserving valuable water resources, and reducing irrigation costs. You can also download these maps from the platform and import them to agriculture equipment for precise water application.
Step Away From Agriculture Problems To Farm Success
The days when farmers could solve agriculture problems solely relying on experience and long-known techniques are fading. Modern agriculture technologies now offer precise field data, helping commercial farmers avoid problems and protect crops worth millions. These tools show exactly where and when to water, fertilize, or treat for pests and diseases — often before problems become visible to the eye. For large-scale operations, satellite monitoring with its regular updates cuts down inspection time and labor costs. Many successful farmers have already integrated precision agriculture technologies into their day-to-day operations, getting better yields even in challenging operational and weather conditions.
About the author:
Kateryna Sergieieva has a Ph.D. in information technologies and 15 years of experience in remote sensing. She is a Senior Scientist at EOSDA responsible for developing technologies for satellite monitoring and surface feature change detection. Kateryna is an author of over 60 scientific publications.
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