Can agriculture technology improve food security in low- and middle-income nations? a systematic review
Abstract
The application of agriculture technology (AT) has been a reliable panacea for meeting the urgent demand for quality and healthy food. Technology has enabled efficiency and effectiveness in swift decision-making, farmers' fiscal and economic sustainability, and food security. However, challenges, such as low adoption, capital intensiveness, technical know-how, climate change, malfunction, and rules and regulations, threaten the precise application of agriculture technology in low and middle-income nations (LMINs). In this review, we have followed the PRISMA guidelines to generate a novel dataset from 60 peer-reviewed articles and we used the Howard Computation Matrix to assess authors' contributions via the institution, country and the trend of publication from 2011 to 2020. We further assessed agriculture technology, utilization, and challenges, and operationalized the variables using the linear regression model to establish the causal inference. The findings revealed that the American and European nations emerged as the highest in terms of agriculture technology research as compared to LMIN. This review recommends policies for LMIN to start massive investments into agriculture technology, as it is the only means to uphold food security.