From Agriculture 4.0 to Human-Centered Agriculture 5.0: Integrating AI, IoT, Robotics, Digital Twins, and Responsible Governance for Sustainable Farming

Abstract

Digital agriculture has moved beyond isolated sensing and automation toward interconnected cyber-physical systems that combine the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, robotics, edge-cloud computing, digital twins, and human expertise. This review synthesizes 55 Scopus-indexed studies published from 2019 to 2025 to clarify how this transition is reshaping crop, livestock, aquaculture, greenhouse, and agri-food systems. Evidence was organized through qualitative synthesis of applications, architectures, performance, adoption barriers, sustainability implications, and governance requirements. Studies demonstrate task-level progress in disease recognition, weed identification, fruit counting, fertilizer recommendation, irrigation anomaly detection, robotic manipulation, and continuous livestock monitoring. Yet high model accuracy does not automatically translate into reliable farm decisions. Agricultural data remain sparse, imbalanced, heterogeneous, context-dependent, and vulnerable to sensor failure, distribution shift, weak validation, and poor interoperability. The most consequential shift in the literature is therefore conceptual: from technology-centered Agriculture 4.0 toward human-centered Agriculture 5.0, in which artificial intelligence augments rather than displaces farmers, agronomists, veterinarians, and extension professionals. This review proposes an integrated “sense–interpret–decide–act–learn–govern” framework linking field devices, multimodal analytics, decision support, autonomous intervention, feedback, cybersecurity, and accountable oversight. It also identifies six priorities for top-tier research: multi-scale sensor fusion, hybrid process–data modeling, edge intelligence, explainable and robust artificial intelligence, inclusive adoption models, and outcome-based sustainability assessment. The review concludes that the next frontier is not simply more automation, but trustworthy, interoperable, affordable, and context-aware agricultural intelligence that performs under real operational constraints while preserving farmer agency, data rights, ecological integrity, and equitable participation. Keywords: Agriculture 5.0; human-centered artificial intelligence; digital agriculture; precision farming; smart sustainable agriculture