Key Points
- Modern agriculture is highly productive but also environmentally damaging.
- Technological innovations are a key part of the solution, but they are not enough on their own.
- The biggest challenge is making sustainable technologies profitable for farmers.
- “Smart farming” entails risks, including the risk of overreliance on technology.
Modern agriculture is a marvel of productivity, but it’s also a major source of environmental damage, from climate change to soil degradation. A team of researchers from the University of Bonn in Germany argues that while new technologies such as AI-powered robots and drones are a key part of the solution, they are insufficient on their own.
To make farming truly sustainable, we need a “root-and-branch” transformation that includes smarter policies and new business models.
The problem, according to the researchers, is that we’ve been trying to solve complex problems with isolated, individual solutions. This approach has led to a patchwork of innovations that don’t add up to a cohesive, sustainable system.
What we need instead is a unified vision for what sustainable agriculture should look like. Everyone, from farmers and scientists to policymakers and the public, should share this vision. Once we have that, we can start to develop the right technologies, business models, and regulations to make it a reality.
The biggest challenge is making sustainable technologies profitable enough for farmers actually to use them. There are many great ideas out there, but if they are more expensive and riskier than the old way of doing things, they will never be widely adopted. This is where policymakers come in. They need to create an environment where it’s more profitable to be green, through a combination of stronger environmental regulations and financial incentives.
The researchers also warn against placing undue reliance on technology alone. They identify five key risks of “smart farming,” including the false belief that it’s automatically more environmentally friendly, the concentration of power in a few large corporations, and the danger that technical solutions will crowd out other necessary changes, like more mindful consumption.
Source: Agricultural Systems (2026).
