Sponsored Content: Profiles in Innovation

Farming has long been a proving ground for the adage "necessity is the mother of invention." From the introduction of the steel plow and reaper over 200 years ago to modern advances like large-scale planters and genetically modified seeds, the human race has continually found new ways to tackle the world's long-term food supply problem. But we're once again nearing a tipping point, with the UN predicting the population will grow 35 percent in the next 35 years with only a four percent increase in arable land. The next leg of food productivity will come from greater precision in agriculture, says Goldman Sachs Research's Jerry Revich, enabling farmers to do more with less. Advances in hardware, software and computing power are converging with modern technologies like self-driving tractors and drones to help farmers feed humanity's next century. "We're simply talking about technologies that are needed to get us to adequate food supply by 2050."