Enhancing agricultural efficiency – and resilience

A version of this article was first published in Trustnet.

Agriculture sits at the centre of global environmental challenges.

As well as being the primary consumer of freshwater and a major contributor of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the sector is almost uniquely vulnerable to water scarcity and climate change. Droughts, floods and storms – all intensified by climate change – threaten production and, ultimately, global food security.

To enhance its resilience and efficiency in the face of these rising challenges, the agriculture industry has been increasingly adopting innovative solutions that cut water use and improve yields. By extension, they also limit its environmental impacts.

Source: CropLife/Purdue Precision Dealer Survey data, as published in McFadden, J., et al., July 2024: Global Adoption of Precision Agriculture: An Update on Trends and Emerging Technologies. 16th International Conference on Precision Agriculture
Soil EC = soil electrical conductivity (an indicator of soil health)

Making better use of limited water

Agriculture uses around 70% of global freshwater withdrawals, with much used for irrigation in water-stressed regions.¹ Three-fifths of the world’s irrigated crops are grown in areas where water supplies are highly stressed.²

In arid and semi‑arid zones – from the Middle East to parts of Africa and South Asia – intensive crop production is placing pressure on rivers, aquifers and reservoirs.³ These pressures are exacerbated by increasingly unreliable weather patterns, and more intense droughts. Even historically reliable sources of freshwater, such as glacier meltwater, are now imperilled by the impacts of climate change.⁴

Farmers also face rising competition for water resources from growing populations and industrial consumption. In this context, they have incentives to adopt technological solutions that reduce their water consumption and minimise losses.

Precision irrigation can optimise water application by tailoring the timing and volume of water to a crop’s specific needs. When combined with sensors, automation and data insights, these systems can cut water use significantly, often by double‑digit percentages, while lowering operational costs.⁵

Valmont is one of the market leaders in this space. Its advanced systems, including centre-pivot irrigation, are being deployed across water‑stressed areas to support more efficient food production. In Egypt, for example, the US company’s technologies have been integrated into national programmes aimed at boosting water‑efficient wheat production in response to disruption of global grain markets after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.⁶

Boosting crop resilience

Weather has always shaped food production, but more frequent and intense extremes induced by climate change pose a significant threat to crop yields. Heat and droughts are estimated to have lowered global yields of key crops barley, maize and wheat by between 4% and 13%, versus what they would have been.⁷ Meanwhile, recent mapping of reported crop-loss shows flood, droughts, heat and storms – including tropical cyclones – damaging or destroying harvests in every region between 2023 and 2025.⁸

For producers, declining yields and less reliable harvests translate into lower incomes, higher production costs and uncertainty about the long‑term viability of their businesses. Against this challenging backdrop, seed innovation is supporting farmers’ adaptation to shifting climatic conditions.

The likes of Japanese-listed Sakata Seed are developing vegetable and flower varieties specifically bred to withstand heat, drought and disease pressures.⁹ By improving resilience at the genetic level, these seeds can help farmers maintain yields under more challenging conditions. Many of Sakata’s vegetable varieties also require less water and fewer agricultural inputs overall, compared with traditional variants – so decreasing dependencies on scarce resources and lowering input costs.

Reducing emissions and energy costs

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the sector is directly responsible – through machinery and fertiliser use, livestock operations, and land management practices – for up to 8.5% of global GHG emissions.¹⁰

There is growing pressure for agriculture to be included in national emissions targets and action plans, with policymakers in certain countries – most notably Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands – mandating GHG emissions reductions by their farming industries, to align with national climate frameworks. Brazil has taken a different approach, using large-scale financial incentives (US$73bn in agricultural credit for 2023-24 alone) to drive voluntary adoption of low-carbon practices across 60mn hectares, with measurable emissions reductions and productivity gains.¹¹

While the direction of travel is far from universal when it comes to climate policy, farmers worldwide face an economic imperative to manage input costs at a time of elevated global energy prices. Energy can account for 40% to 50% of variable crop production costs in developed economies.¹²

In this context, adoption of more efficient agricultural equipment can enhance producers’ margins and better insulate them from volatile oil and gas prices. Alternative fuels look likely to play an expanding role. AGCO, the world’s largest pure-play manufacturer of farm equipment, is developing electric powertrains and next‑generation engines for its tractors that are designed to be compatible with hydrogen and methanol, as well as diesel.¹³

A growing market for solutions

We expect the industry’s vulnerability to water stress, climate change and volatile energy prices to accelerate adoption of technologies that improve its resilience. Demand should also act as a catalyst for innovation, with emerging technologies enhancing the economics of farming and reducing its environmental footprint.

As pressures on scarce global resources increase, scaling these solutions will ultimately be essential to ensuring that agriculture can meet global food demands sustainably – and profitably.

¹ Unesco, 2024
² World Resources Institute, 2024: One-Quarter of World’s Crops Threatened by Water Risks
³ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2019: Climate Change and Land
⁴ Unesco, 2025: United Nations World Water Development Report – Mountains and Glaciers: Water towers
⁵ Jaiswal, N., Kumar, T.V. & Shukla, C., November 2025: Smart drip irrigation systems using IoT: a review of architectures, machine learning models, and emerging trends. Discover Agriculture
⁶ Elkot, A.F. et al., 2024: Yield Responses to Total Water Input from Irrigation and Rainfall in Six Wheat Cultivars Under Different Climatic Zones in Egypt. Agronomy
⁷ Lobell, D.B. & Di Tommaso, S., May 2025: A half-century of climate change in major agricultural regions: Trends, impacts, and surprises. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
⁸ Carbon Brief, 2025: Mapped: How extreme weather is destroying crops around the world
⁹ Sakata Seed, 2026
¹⁰ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2023: IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
¹¹ OECD Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2024: Brazil Country Profile
¹² IEA, 2022: How the energy crisis is exacerbating the food crisis
¹³ AGCO, 2026

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