The origin or the first application of Big Data is hard to identify in agriculture as the definition of Big Data is not uniform and may vary depending on applications. Among these diverse definitions, the characteristics of “three Vs” defined by Laney (Laney 2001) are generally accepted when defining Big Data in agriculture.
The size of data collected for analysis is the first V. Benefited by advanced equipment (e.g., Internet of Things (IoT)) and infrastructure (e.g., 5G), data can be collected by numerous sensors attached to devices, such as drones, tractors, smartphones, etc., in different forms, frequency, and quality. Based on the industrial projections, there would be nearly 12 million sensors installed globally for agriculture purposes by 2023 (Meola 2021). The current average data points collected by a farm are estimated to be half a million data points per day (Meola 2021), which is projected to reach 4 million by 2036.
