ENERGY

30 Mar 2016

BANGKOK, March 31, 2016 – Modernisation and digitisation of the Thai agricultural sector is driving growth in IT spending to 7.02%. The transformation that is beginning to take place is being driven by Thai Government policies focussed on smart farming and enabling technology led innovation to transform traditional agriculture practices.

Agriculture employs 39% of the Thai population and is the major source of domestic income. Thai farming faces many challenges – land erosion, fertility and poor labour productivity. The opportunity to build holistic digital capabilities that enable the establishment of smart farming utilizing third platform technologies – cloud, mobility and analytics and particularly enable data driven insights to drive decision making will deliver big impacts in terms of productivity and yield. However, there are challenges, particularly the technology foundations, education and affordability.

"The issue is not really the technology itself – it is available, it is about building the right ecosystem that serves the requirements of Thai agricultural communities and delivers it in a way that is cost effective and easy to use", says IDC Energy Insights Head of WW Mining, Emilie Ditton. "Agricultural companies that successfully examine the role and treatment of technology along with the farms, farms metrics, work practice and regional agriculture process will differentiate themselves through superior financial results, attracting talent and investment."

New smart farming projects will change the way technology and agricultural practices interact. 3rd Platform technologies — particularly, mobility, big data and analytics — along with innovation accelerators (such as robotics, IoT, cognitive systems and bigdata/analytics) are coming together to shape operations and change the role that technology plays.

IDC’s analysis of IT spending growth by the Thai agriculture sector shows growth driven by crop yield technology and 3^rd party information services. Thai agriculture organisations are seeking to overcome challenges through solutions that can improve yield management, harvesting systems and farm asset management. The role of IoT, and managing and using data insights effectively, will form an increasingly important part of value delivery.

"The Thai agricultural sector is just at the beginning of its digitisation – this is a transformative process that will shift the nature of Thai farming as technology capabilities are introduced," says Michael Araneta, Country Manager, IDC Thailand. "The process will be step by step, finding the easiest and fast opportunities to make a difference will be the first steps, ultimatley it will transform farming in Thailand."