2. Background & Opportunities

2.1 Global Pain Points in Agriculture

Agriculture, the oldest and most fundamental industry of human civilization, is facing unprecedented challenges. The current global agricultural system is constrained by six major structural pain points, threatening both food security and sustainable development.

• Seed Monopoly: More than 75% of the global commercial seed market is controlled by a handful of multinational agribusiness giants, forming a de facto “seed hegemony.” Farmers have lost autonomy in seed selection, relying only on expensive commercial supply chains, while consumers are deprived of true diversity and quality in food choices. This concentration results in price manipulation, technological blockade, and long-term dependency, stifling innovation across the industry.

• Stagnating Productivity: Arable land is shrinking due to urbanization and land degradation. Meanwhile, climate change brings frequent droughts, floods, and extreme weather events, making stable yields increasingly difficult. After decades of technical optimization, the yield ceiling of traditional agriculture is nearing its limit, unable to meet the demands of a growing population and evolving dietary structures.

• Food Trust Crisis: Food safety incidents are recurring worldwide, while supply chains remain opaque from seed to table. Consumers lack effective traceability systems, eroding trust in agricultural products and brands, and undermining the long-term value of premium produce.

• Insufficient Premium Supply: With consumption upgrading, demand for high-quality food is surging. However, seed monopolies and industrial constraints hinder the development and scaling of premium varieties, leaving high-quality agricultural products scarce and often a luxury for the few, rather than accessible to the many.

• Supply Chain Asymmetry: Agricultural value chains are lengthy and opaque, leaving farmers in weak bargaining positions while intermediaries capture most of the profits. Farmers struggle with low incomes, while consumers pay inflated prices. This inefficiency not only widens rural-urban disparities but also weakens agriculture’s global competitiveness.

• Dormant Agricultural Data: Agriculture is inherently data-intensive, yet the collection and utilization rate of agricultural data remain extremely low. High-value datasets on crop growth, environmental conditions, and varietal improvements lack standardized collection and monetization mechanisms, leaving vast amounts of data unused, slowing down both scientific breakthroughs and industrial upgrades.

2.2 Emerging Opportunities

Amid these global challenges, technological and structural innovations are opening up unprecedented opportunities for agriculture. The convergence of space technology, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and IoT is paving a new evolutionary pathway for the industry.

• Space Agriculture: Space provides a unique environment for crop breeding that cannot be replicated on Earth. Microgravity alters plant cell division and differentiation, while cosmic radiation induces natural genetic mutations—accelerating biodiversity at the genomic level. Seeds cultivated in space often demonstrate stronger resilience, adaptability, and improvements in nutritional value and yield. With the commercialization of space exploration, space agriculture is shifting from national experiments to scalable applications, offering solutions for food security on Earth and laying the foundation for humanity’s future interplanetary survival.

• Web3 Technologies: Blockchain introduces transparency and trust into agricultural supply chains. Farmland, seeds, and agricultural products can be tokenized as digital assets, unlocking new forms of globalized value exchange. On-chain traceability ensures that every step—from seed to table—can be verified, rebuilding consumer confidence. Decentralized governance (DAO) introduces new collaboration models, allowing farmers, researchers, consumers, and investors to co-create rules and share resources. Agriculture thus evolves from a closed system into an open, transparent, and collaborative ecosystem.

• AI + IoT: The integration of AI and IoT is propelling agriculture into the era of intelligence. Distributed sensors capture multi-dimensional data—light, temperature, moisture, soil nutrients—in real time. Combined with agricultural AI models, this enables predictive analytics and precision control of growth environments. AI can automatically detect pests and diseases, continuously optimize production, and enhance overall efficiency and yield. IoT further enables real-time monitoring and remote farm management, turning the vision of “smart farming” into reality.

2.3 The New Paradigm

The convergence of Space Agriculture, Web3, and AI+IoT forms the three core drivers of agricultural transformation. Together, they are reshaping agriculture from “traditional production” to “intelligent collaboration,” and from “Earth-based farming” to “interplanetary agriculture.”

This synergy is opening a pathway toward a new civilization paradigm — an agricultural foundation for a multi-planetary future.