Artificial Intelligence in Farming
Getting Man and Machine to work side by side on the farm 🧑🏾🌾
With the world population increasing at a rapid rate and speculated to reach over 9 billion by 2050, it is imminent that an increase in agricultural production will be needed to fill in the void of food shortage. This is a serious challenge for the agri-food industry particularly in a context of resources scarcity, climate change, COVID-19 pandemic and several challenges.
As modern day farming evolves, there have been several inventions to improve the agriculture industry from mechanized to technology solutions and in some cases, human psychological enhancement. A symbiosis of cows and drones has never felt so natural and necessary which translates to the fact that agriculture technology (agri-tech) is creating more data through IoT (Internet of Things), monitoring field variability, crop cycle monitoring and several data driven algorithmic methods. Another vivid scenario that seems to register in our minds is the use of greenhouse technology to improve crop growth and production. There is no use in further trying to prove a point by boring you with random examples of how companies already use technology in agriculture, instead, let’s focus on an aspect of agri-tech which is fast growing but yet not fully understood or tapped in by modern farmers, Artificial intelligence (A.I.).
From planting of crops to distribution, and ultimately having your meal served, there are several complications that unfolds from planting the right crop in the right soil, to crop monitoring and harvesting. There is no doubt A.I. can assist in streamlining the process. Before we go far, one must be wondering what is A.I. itself before introducing it to agriculture. According to Britannica “artificial intelligence is the ability of a digital computer or computer controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings”, in this case humans. Since the development of digital computers in the early 19th century, there have been several experiments on how computers can be programmed to carry out difficult tasks in fields such as medical, military and scientific while not leaving out agriculture.
How A.I. can assist us as farmers 🧑🏾🌾👩🏾🌾
The industry is turning to Artificial Intelligence technology to increase crop yield, ensure healthier crops, control pests, monitor soil and growing conditions, organize data for farmers, minimize farm workload, and improve a wide range of agriculture related tasks in the entire food supply chain. We would be highlighting a few points on how A.I. can affect our farming methods;
Weather Forecasting 🌧️: with the rise of unpredictable weather conditions and the dynamics of climate change, it has become difficult to predict weather seasons thereby affecting crop planting and harvest predictability. However, with help of Artificial Intelligence, farmers can analyze weather conditions with weather forecasting which helps them plan the type of crop that can be grown and when should seeds should be sown.
Soil and crop health monitoring system 🌡️: The type of soil and its composition plays an important factor in the type of crop is grown and its quality. Due to increasing deforestation, soil quality is degrading and it’s hard to determine the quality of the soil appropriate for planting hence with the use of A.I. precision drones, farmers can capture images of crops, monitor health of crops and tips on how to restore ailing ones and several other crop monitoring and data gathering methods using a smartphone. This helps the farmer to identify pests and bacteria thereby helping farmers to determine the timely use of pest control and other methods to take required action.
Precision Farming and Predictive Analytics 📊: A.I. applications in agriculture help farmers by providing them proper guidance about water management, crop rotation, timely harvesting, type of crop to be grown, optimum planting, pest attacks and nutrition management.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence in agriculture not only helps farmers automate farming but also shifts to precise cultivation for higher crop yield and better quality while using fewer resources. And to assist farmers more, there are now more companies that are into A.I. in agriculture and also affordable.
