Where is the future of AI in agriculture in Sri Lanka?
AI is bursting with possibility. Across the world, AI is improving the lives of citizens in multiple economic and social sectors such as healthcare, education, transport and so on. On Friday, 31st January 2020, Hatch Works together with the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce held a panel discussion on using AI in agriculture.
AI policy framework in Sri Lanka
SLASSOM (Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Companies) drafted the policy framework on AI in June 2019 to support the IT/BPM sector’s growth in AI. Jeevan Gnanam, immediate past Chairman of SLASSCOM explained that the AI policy framework in Sri Lanka includes creating awareness about AI and its uses in different sectors such as agriculture, introducing regulations to maintain confidence, safety and the appropriate use of AI, and equipping society on how to use it. Additionally, he spoke about the importance of identifying niche opportunities for the efficient use of AI and using Sri Lanka as a testing base to attract global technology as seen with Dialog, who have been very successful in testing technology in Sri Lanka and launching it to the rest of South Asia.
AI in agriculture
In India, 175 farmers in Andra Pradesh were able to use AI to sow seeds in a test project that was initiated by Microsoft and ICRISAT back in 2016 while in Maharashtra, Mumbai-based Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence tested an AI-based pest control system last year. Similarly, in Xinjiang province in China, drones spray pesticides in cotton fields that are over 1544 square miles at once making the process time-efficient and resulting in higher output.
In Sri Lanka, farmers are open to change the way they work but lack the opportunity, knowledge or ability to deal with technology as advanced as AI. Therefore, one main objective would be to give the people in agriculture this opportunity. Some of the areas that AI can add value is in yield forecasting, price indexing, and authenticating the integrity of the value chain (such as tracing chemical intervention in the product lifestyle).
“Agriculture has a lot of variables such as weather, output and the market. Equipment in AI is very costly. A higher yield does not compensate for the price of the technology,” says Samantha Ranatunga former Managing Director of CIC and present Director of RemediumOne (Pvt) Ltd. “Whatever you want to do in data has to make business sense. If we can’t add value, people won’t pay a premium for the product. For example, we can create data points for the weather, water availability, soil type, growing conditions, decease profiles, yield data but the technology to set all this up would be very expensive,” adds Samantha.
Challenges in AI for agriculture in Sri Lanka
Compared with the rest of the world, Sri Lanka is far behind in using data science in agriculture. Speaking about the future “Agriculture depends a lot on many hardware solutions. Enabling software solutions such as AI requires that we already set up the necessary hardware solutions. Countries such as India are far ahead of us. They already use AI in fertiliser application, decease recognition and identifying deficiencies. So our best bet now, would be to learn from them,” says Sharm De Alwis who is the Managing Director of Onesh Agri (Pvt) Ltd, a company that specialises in supplying farmers with seeds, irrigation systems, polytunnels and other agricultural technology. Speaking on data availability, Sharm says that data while not being 100% accurate, still exists and is available at the National Agricultural and Information Centre in Gannoruwa which is a great place to start research for anyone who is interested.
Image courtsey: Nandhu Kumar
Mentorship programmes and accelerators such as GLX (Good Life Accelerator) carried out by Hatch Works and German Development Corporation (GIZ) are geared up to help startups who want to use technology in agriculture. With companies such as Sensagro using sensor precision to identify and supply the plants with its requirements and HonestGreens using technology to control climate and nutrients to indoor plants that grow indoors, technology is already showing results in agriculture with the future holding more opportunities.
