According to AgWired, the current estimated size of the precision agriculture market in the U.S. is between $.15 billion and $2 billion. Current estimates are that precision agriculture market investments in the U.S. by producers and service providers using precision agriculture technology will grow at a rate of at least 13% per year for the next five years as precision agriculture interest and use increases with the emergence of younger farmers. Precision agriculture outside the U.S., particularly in developing countries is expected to grow at 25% per year over the next five years as these countries need to drastically improve yields. According to Bloomberg, during the first nine months of 2013 approximately $40.9 million has been invested in unmanned aircraft system (UAS, or drone) start-ups – double that of 2012. The entire industry is realizing that the key driver for the development of precision agriculture is data and as smaller companies develop specialty software, cloud data services, sensors, analytics and drones, there will be consolidation in the sector as the smaller companies are bought by larger ones with the customer bases to which they can market the technology.
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