## 1 Introduction  
The food and beverage industry is characterized by a relatively small number of multinational companies that link small producers around the world with consumers. A development analysis conducted by the World Economic Forum and Accenture, in 2018 [1], focused, predominantly, on upstream value chain segments due to the low tech nature of food and beverage processing and production and the substantial potential for improving efficiency in agrifood activities. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the food and beverage industry is classified as a low tech industry, so it can add innovation without significant social disadvantages [2]. According to the OECD, each opportunity presented by the Fourth Industrial Revolution must be used to realize a global food production system that can address challenges with limited environmental impact while taking advantage of opportunities for growth, innovation, and development [2]. The developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution will change production systems in the food and beverage industry through innovation in digital, physical, and biological technologies [1]; for instance, vertical agriculture, advanced wastewater treatment, advanced packaging, precision agriculture [3], advanced organic agriculture, supply chain traceability [4], genome editing, cell and tissue engineering, automated agriculture [5], remote sensing [6], 3D food printing, and Agriculture 4.0. The three main developments with the most significant growth potential for value creation in the food and beverage industry are: precision agriculture, advanced organic agriculture, and genome publishing [1]. In particular, precision agriculture integrates data analysis processes with crop science and technologies such as GPS, soil sensors, meteorological data, and the Internet of Things (IoT) for decisions related to fertilizer, irrigation, harvest time, and seed spacing, among others. Precision agriculture is applicable to the entire agricultural production system and drives substantial yield increases while optimizing for resource use [1]. The goal of precision agriculture is to enable scientific decisions in agriculture to improve value creation. One industry in which precision agriculture can improve value creation is the coffee industry; in particular, the specialty market. Coffee is one of the world's most popular drinks and merchantable commodities. Every year, over 500,000 million cups are consumed, and over 158 million bags of 60 kg are produced. Coffee is grown in around 70 countries around the world in a region known as the Bean Belt. This region is located between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, and the world's primary producers are Brazil (2720 million kg/year), Vietnam (1650 million kg/year), and Colombia (810 million kg/year). Furthermore, the social impact of the coffee growing industry is very significant because the people who depend on this activity for all or most of their living exceeds 100,000,000 worldwide [7]. The market is divided into two groups, known as the standard and specialty markets, according to the quality of the final product, which depends on the cultivated coffee variety, the environmental conditions, and the post-harvest process. This quality is measured with a score between zero and 100 and is known as the cup quality. When the cup quality is less than 80 points, the coffee belongs to the standard market, and its selling price depends primarily on the New York Commodity Exchange. On the other hand, when the coffee has a cup quality greater than or equal to 80 points, it belongs to the specialty market, and its selling price is at least twice the standard coffee price [8]. Nevertheless, it is a fact that coffee, which is cultivated with a view toward the specialty market, needs a more careful and judicious agronomic management.