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AI has been one of the disruptive technologies that experienced a widespread application in the last decade. Leading a way into bringing high quality food, it is also speculated to be fighting against world hunger.
Fremont, CA: Agriculture and farming are considered to be the most important professions all around the world. Humanity and its practices have transcended the way agriculture is performed with the integration of various technologies. As the world population increases with each minute and second, the availability of farm land becomes scarce, forcing farmers to give extra care while making decisions for choosing crop/crop systems. The ultimate goal is to utilize less area of the land and produce the most of the crops, along with increased productivity.
Agriculture today is a $5 trillion industry across the globe, and now the industry has partnered with several technologies of which Artificial Intelligence(AI) being the most prominent, to support smart farming methods. The sustainable and smart farming focuses on producing a healthier yield of crops, control pests, and the regular monitoring of the soil. It also keeps in check the growing conditions, organizes data and information for the farmers, assists in workload reduction, and enhances a wide range of agriculture-related tasks holistically in the food supply chain.
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• AI to Analyze Farming-Related Data:
Farms produce massive amounts of agricultural data points on the ground every day. With the assistance of AI, farmers can now analyze in-depth a variety of things in real-time. Several parameters like weather conditions, temperature, water usage or conditions of soil collected from the farmland are being used to make thought-out and informed decisions. Many examples for AI being used in the farmland include optimization of farming techniques to produce more bountiful yields by predicting the crop choices and the best hybrid seed choices, along with resource utilization.
AI systems help increase the quality and accuracy of the harvest. This technique is known as precision agriculture. It uses AI to aid the detection of diseases in plants, control pests, and poor plant nutrition on farms. These sensors powered by AI can also detect and target weeds and then decide the kind of herbicides to be applied within a respective buffer zone. It not only helps in the prevention of over-application of herbicides but also stops the excessive toxins from being accumulated into food.
AI technology can also help farmers create seasonal forecasting models to enhance agricultural accuracy and increase productivity. These models can be utilized to decipher and predict the weather patterns to enable proper planning for the farmers. For small farms in developing countries, seasonal farming will be handy as their data and knowledge are limited. It is crucial for the small farms to remain operational and produce bountiful yields all year round as they produce almost 70 percent of the world's total food production.
Additionally, the farmers can monitor the sky along with the ground data of the farm. Computer vision and deep learning algorithms can be applied and captured from drones flying over their fields. With drones, AI-enabled cameras can be utilized to capture images of the entire farm and analyze the images in near real-time to recognize the problematic areas and the potential improvements. Unmanned drones can cover much more land in less time in comparison to man surveying on foot, allowing regular monitoring.
• AI Solves the Labor Challenge:
Managing the reluctant agrarian workforce is one of the major challenges the farming sector faces at present. The ever evolving new age tech and other developments have driven the young generations to cities and created a huge worker deficit in the farms. A solution that is said to assist in tackling this problem is the utilization of AI-driven agricultural bots. These AI-driven bots augment the human labour workforce and are applied in many forms in a plethora of tasks. These bots can be used for killing weeds, harvesting better crops, and producing a better yield.
Farmers can also rely on the chatbots when any legal assistance is required. The chatbots extend helping hands here by answering a variety of frequently asked questions and provide advice, suggestions along with recommendations on a specific farm problem or plant quality issue.
With the application of AI and several other cognitive technologies in farms around the world, a much able and efficient system is in place with fewer workers than before. These smart farms simultaneously produce more food than traditional methods and fulfil the world's food needs in a more effectual way.
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