Daedong launches Korea's first Precision Agriculture service... Signs its first contract
Daedong launches Korea's first Precision Agriculture service... Signs its first contract
- After four years of demonstrations for precision agriculture, the company aims to secure subscribers to its services among rice farmers across the country this year
- Daedong signs first contracts with farmers in Gurye and Sunchang to deliver AI-powered rice farming solutions for a year
- The company aims to secure 1 million pyeong of paid farmland for precision agriculture services this year and roughly 36,000 farming customers by 2029
Daedong launched a new precision agriculture service in Korea, similar to services already offered by global agricultural machinery companies like John Deere.
Daedong (co-CEOs Kim Jun-sik and Won Yu-hyun), a leader and pioneer in future agriculture, announced on February 27 that it signed its first couple of contracts this year with domestic rice farmers, as the only Korean company to commercialize its precision agriculture solution service[i].
Over the past four years, from 2021 to 2024, Daedong has been conducting precision agriculture demonstrations on field crops such as rice and soybeans, across a total area of roughly 959,000m2 (290,000 pyeong), 228 plots, and 25 farms to advance its solution. In 2024, farms using precision agriculture achieved a 7% reduction in fertilizer use and a 6.9% increase in rice yield. Under the banner encouraging the “Full-Scale Application of Future Businesses,” Daedong has begun securing customers by introducing ▲stand-alone precision agriculture service products, and ▲ agricultural machinery bundles using its advanced precision agriculture solutions.
The first two customers are Han Seung-soo (an independent farmer) in Sunchang-gun, Jeollabuk-do, and Yang Hong-sik (CEO of the Yeongji Agricultural Cooperative Corporation) in Gurye-gun, Jeollanam-do. The company highlighted the significance of these two clients, citing them as the first cases of a precision agriculture service contract with an independent farmer and an agricultural corporation, respectively. The contract will run for one year, and the Daedong will serve a total farmland area of 10,000 pyeong in Sunchang and 20,000 pyeong in Gurye. Daedong will provide its precision agriculture clients with rice farming solutions powered by AI, including soil sample analyses and growth analyses using drones.
In relation to this, soil will be collected and analyzed from farmlands before sowing (seeding) to prescribe a base fertilizer that can help create optimal soil conditions for crop cultivation. Thereafter, Daedong will provide a fertilizer application solution through a variable-rate fertilization map for each farmland section backed by growth data collected using drones. These services will help farmers apply only the necessary volume of fertilizer for each patch of farmland, and also change the rate of fertilization, differentiating the amount of fertilizer used according to the growth of the crops. The key to precision agriculture is that it enables farmers to improve productivity and optimize resources by turning conventional farming processes into digital processes. It is also advantageous in that the entire farming process is recorded and analyzed as data, making it easier to manage.
Han Seung-soo (Sunchang-gun, Jeollabuk-do), Daedong's first independent client for precision agriculture, said, “I’m in my fourth year of farming. Having farmed for a few years now, I started to become interested in precision agriculture because I realized that there are limitations to conventional farming.” He added, “I think precision agriculture is essential for smart farming, and I look forward to improving productivity going forward.” Yang Hong-sik (Gurye-gun, Jeollanam-do) also said, “We signed the contract to introduce scientific farming methods and make rice production more stable. We want to experience the effectiveness of precision agriculture firsthand with our contract."
Daedong is hoping to secure a total area of approximately 331,000m2 (1 million pyeong) of paid precision agriculture services this year. In the long term, the company plans to expand the crops to which precision agriculture is applied, which at the moment is mostly focused on rice, increase the take-up rate at individual farms, and even enter the North American market. Moreover, it plans to utilize advanced technologies such as soil analysis using agricultural and forestry satellites and farming operations linked to smart agricultural machinery and robots in the future. By doing so, Daedong plans to provide its services to 4% of all farms (approximately 36,300 farms) by 2029 in line with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs' precision agriculture distribution policy.
Lee Kwang-wook, Head of Daedong's Domestic Business Division, said, “Our first contracts for precision agriculture services mark an important milestone in ushering in the future of domestic agriculture.” He explained, “Daedong will start offering precision agriculture services in earnest from this year and will lead the change and innovation of domestic farms using various customized solutions and advanced AI technology, further solidifying our leadership in the digitalization and smartization of agriculture.”
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[i] Precision agriculture service provides solutions that can add advanced technology to agriculture based on big data in order to maximize harvests. It is considered the key to future agriculture in that it maximizes the productivity of crops by inputting minimum resources in response to food crises caused by declining farmland and abnormal weather conditions.
The precision agriculture market is already growing rapidly around the world. Europe is making various efforts to adopt precision agriculture, and in Germany, which is actively pushing for agricultural innovations, more than 30% of farms use precision agriculture. In the US, the world's largest agricultural market, the proportion of farms using precision agriculture is also estimated to be over 40%. In Korea, although research and development on applying precision agriculture is actively underway under the leadership of government agencies such as the Rural Development Administration and the Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, the adoption rate at farms remains extremely low.