Tenets of ‘agronomics’ – farmer-centric research

Digitisation of agriculture is not only energising but reversing the generation and flows of knowledge, from top-down to bottom-up, so creating a new crowd-sourced, multi-scale science which we call agronomics. Benefits in enhanced productivity and sustainability should be large but mainly public and diffuse. This review of our top ten tenets of agronomics suggests that essential innovations need to be conceptual and social more than physical, so difficult to justify commercially. Priorities for investment to maximise agricultural progress through agronomics are the creation of (i) an open digital ecosystem for interoperable software services, and (ii) a structured network (or ‘virtual institute’) to lead thinking, research, education and training in agronomics.