According to a study, photonics is a key factor in global food security

Photonics is a jack-of-all-trades. Those of us who work in the industry are well aware of its enormous technological potential.

And indeed, photonics is the key to solving the challenges of the 21st century. It can drive technological progress in a wide range of fields, such as sustainability, CO2 reduction, healthcare, changes in traffic volume, autonomous driving, e-mobility, semiconductors, quantum systems, and communications.

In all these areas, photonics provides the indispensable foundation for technological progress, without which society’s major challenges cannot be solved. In our study, we would like to shed light on another area: food production.

Given the large number of people worldwide who lack access to sufficient or nutritious food, there is a great need for technological solutions that are also sustainable and move away from conventional agriculture and its immense environmental impact. Photonics does not offer a single technological solution to this challenge, just as improved battery technology, for example, was a game-changer for electric mobility. Rather, photonics provides the building blocks for technical solutions that make agriculture more precise, faster, and more efficient. Nor is there a single user group on which photonics providers focus. The target groups are broadly distributed along the agricultural value chain. For each target group, it is worthwhile to keep an eye out—both now and in the coming years—for technological advances that promise significant efficiency gains. Conversely, developers of photonic components and solutions should have a good understanding of their users in the agricultural sector and address them in a targeted manner.

The technological concept behind these new and improved solutions can be summarized under the term “precision agriculture,” which is based on four technology families: robotics and automation, imaging and sensor technology, digitization and big data analytics, and bioengineering. Photonics contributes to this by detecting, monitoring, understanding, and controlling. And as you can imagine, none of these technological fields would be conceivable without photonics. There are already numerous solutions, and yet precision agriculture is still in its infancy. The variety of ideas and innovations is enormous, as is the potential. Annual growth of 15 percent is expected in the coming years alone. We’re still talking about the energy transition, but soon we’ll be talking about the agricultural revolution.

Jörg Mayer, Managing Director of SPECTARIS

Precision agriculture makes it possible, among other things, to apply fertilizers and water more precisely and to reduce the use of pesticides—or even eliminate them entirely in the future

Already today, about ten percent of the world’s population is undernourished. And the trend is rising. By the year 2100, the world’s population is projected to grow by 40 percent to 11 billion people. Compounding this are declining arable land, soil degradation, and increasing water scarcity. To feed humanity both efficiently and sustainably, there is no way around the innovative technologies of precision agriculture—and thus the solutions offered by photonics. This is confirmed by a new study conducted by the industry association SPECTARIS and Messe München in cooperation with the market research firm Tematys.

Traditional agriculture will not be able to sustainably expand cultivated areas and yields to the extent required by demographic trends. “For a long time, fertilizers and pesticides were able to increase yields, but these options have now been largely exhausted, and environmental considerations are becoming increasingly important,” emphasizes Dr. Bernhard Ohnesorge, Chair of Photonics at SPECTARIS. Globally, agriculture already accounts for 72 percent of all surface and groundwater withdrawals, mainly for irrigation.

This is where so-called precision agriculture comes into play: With the help of precision agriculture, fertilizers and water, among other things, can be applied more precisely, and pesticide use can be reduced or even eliminated entirely in the future. At the same time, yields are increased through continuous monitoring of animals and plants, and new forms of agriculture—such as urban or vertical farming—are made possible. Digital connectivity and the rise of autonomous units—including agricultural robots—lead to significant efficiency gains and can help address the shortage of skilled workers or reduce farmers’ workloads. “Photonics is thus becoming a key factor in global food security,” explains Ohnesorge.

Examples include centimeter-precise, partially or fully autonomous driving of agricultural vehicles, as well as the collection and mapping of data on moisture, nutrients, soil compaction, and plant health using optical sensors or cameras. Precision agriculture also includes robotic weeding and pest control as alternatives to chemicals. Optimized, energy-efficient lighting systems are used in greenhouses and in vertical farming. For these still-emerging fields of application in photonics, the authors of the study forecast annual growth of around 15 percent in the coming years and a doubling of the global market from 4.6 billion euros in 2022 to 9.1 billion euros in 2027.