Agricultural technology as a driver of sustainable intensification: insights from the diffusion and focus of patents

Sustainable intensification (SI) responds to the concurrent challenges of increasing food production while reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture. As an early disclosure of innovation, patents are a useful indicator of technology market potential. However, we lack understanding of the extent to which current agricultural technology patents relate to the goals of SI and which kinds of technologies can potentially address SI. Here, we analyzed the diffusion and focus of more than one million patents issued during the period 1970–2022. We explored the degree to which the patents relate to SI through the co-occurrence of efficiency and environmental friendliness targets. Our results reveal that while the rate of patent issuance has dramatically increased over the past five decades, the rate at which patents diffused to different countries had decreased over time. The USA was the biggest net exporter of patents and had produced by far the most high-impact patents (in the top 1% most-cited patents). Since 1970, only 4% of agricultural patents and 6% of high-impact patents were related to SI targets (i.e., promoting both agricultural efficiency and environmental friendliness), but the attention to SI has increased over time. The most highly cited SI-related patents had become more diverse over time, shifting from digital, machine, and energy technologies in 1980s to the current era of agroecology, information, and computer networking. Our results provide an early indication of promising technologies that may play a greater role for SI in the future, subject to the challenges of market transfer and farm adoption and complemented by non-technological innovations in farm management and institutional support.