Brazil: To export the excedent of production compared to Brazilian consuption;

Fight rural proverty;

Problem brought by the need to lower cost of production

Undoubtedly IT has a big role in not only high-tech but also in sustainable agriculture. Few links shared, may be useful:

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/IP/2016/NVA/WEF_FSA_FutureofGlobalFoodSystems.pdf

https://www.iso.org/news/Ref2183.htm

https://medium.com/@Unfoldlabs/drones-in-precision-agriculture-331c23cefc0b

http://www.youris.com/Bioeconomy/Agriculture/Satellites-And-High-Tech-Solutions-Help-African-Farmers-Face-Historic-Drought.kl

http://www.e-agriculture.org/news/satellites-agriculture-how-help-your-farm-million-miles-away

Article Retrieving Leaf Area Index (LAI) Using Remote Sensing: Theor...

http://www.wamis.org/agm/pubs/agm8/Paper-17.pdf

http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6058e.pdf

Article Multisensor Monitoring System for Assessment of Locust Hazar...

I think the major challenges for high-tech agriculture may be:

1. Development of sensors : Sensors can play a major role for high tech agriculture, it may help in every sector like diagnosis, deficiency, control of insect pest etc.

2. Application of Nanotechnology: It has enormous potential in all aspect of agriculture. But we have to standardized the doses as well as application procedure. Moreover lot of research is needed for to avoid environmental hazard to use nanaparticles.

3. Farmers motivation: It is a big constraint, to convince farmer after developing technology has most difficult part. We need to work on it to motivate farmers.

4. Improvement of remote sensing devices: It needs further research to refine , so that we may accurately assess without much hindrance. For example, so far we are unable to assess the moisture content in the soil or nutrient status through remote sensing to analyse a large area within short time. The accurate estimation by remote sensing technique is essential.

5. Precision farming : More work needed to refine precision technique as it has enormous potential . We have also to educate the farmers to convince them to adopt the modern technology.

Main issue in the Indian context is how to downscale and deliver the technology to smallholder farmers who often own fragments of land in different location within a given area. The other is the cost=returns of such high tech for a small holder farmer.

The main issue from my point of view is sustainable development. I have a few articles written on this topic but their application (case study is in the forestry field). For a literature review on sustainable development and high-tech development, in a field related to yours, might end up generating some starting points. Land use can be stimulated by state subsidies and policies that may encourage investment in high technology but in order to be successful it has to be affordable for the small farmers.

Thank you all for your quick and helpful answers.

Internet of things (Human to Field devices, Sensor to Sensor, Farmer to Database etc.. Communications ) is the Future Challenge