Artificial Intelligence: Future of Agriculture Industry

In many countries, the mainstay occupation for the people is agriculture. With the constantly rising population, the pressure on farmers to grow more crops is increasing, and the arable land is declining. Thus, farmers need to produce more using fewer resources to meet this increasing demand, which, in turn, would be challenging for them.

Moreover, to meet the demands of the rising populations using conventional farming methods is not possible. The constant rise of problems is driving agriculture companies and farmers to discover newer ways for increasing crop production and reducing waste.

In the last few years, technology has helped redefine the agriculture sector. Moreover, advancement in technologies affects and develops the agriculture sector in many ways.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be the possible solution for the rising issues in the agriculture sector. It will help farmers improve the quality and quantity and help grow crops much faster.

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

An artificial intelligence system is a technology that can work similarly to human intelligence. It can be defined as a machine that can mimic humans and execute tasks in the simplest possible ways, even for complex tasks.

Artificial intelligence mainly helps understand the data, and analyze the provided data.

Some uses of AI are AI systems in self-driven cars, recommendation engines that work differently for each customer as per their past purchases, virtual assistants such as Siri and Alexa in android and apple devices.

Artificial intelligence is creating considerable impacts in nearly every sector. Every sector is looking to get specific jobs automated using AI machinery. Even the agriculture sector is developing and finding solutions to resolve certain challenges.

Agriculture is one of the most important and oldest professions globally as it plays a crucial role in developing the country’s economic sector.

As per the market reports of the BIS Research, the global artificial intelligence in the agriculture market is projected to reach $6,655.1 million by 2026 from $1,378.0 million in 2020, with a CAGR of 30.56%.

Since the world population is increasing, natural resources are insufficient to meet the constantly rising demands. So, farmers require a more innovative approach for producing crops more effectively.

Challenges Associated with Conventional Farming Methods

Following are common challenges faced by farmers while using the conventional method of farming:

• In agriculture, climatic factors such as temperature, humidity, and rainfalls play a vital role in the farming life cycle. Increasing pollution and deforestation are resulting in great climatic changes. So, it becomes challenging for farmers to decide on prepping the soil, sowing, and harvesting.
• There are specific requirements of nutrition by plants in the soil. The three primary nutrients are potassium, phosphorous, and nutrients nitrogen. However, these days, the soil does not have the required amount of nutrients, leading to poor quality and growth of crops.
• In the conventional method, it is not possible to control and monitor the growth of the weed. An increase of weeds in the agriculture farm can get most soil nutrients absorbed by them and result in fewer nutrients left for the plants.

Artificial Intelligence Applications to Resolve Agriculture Problems

The agriculture industry is adopting several technologies and systems based on artificial intelligence to get healthier crops, monitor soil, control pests, organize required information for farmers, and improve several other agriculture-related works. AI-based systems are helping in solving farming problems and getting adequate crop production. Following are some ways through which AI help resolve agriculture issues.

Providing accurate weather forecasting

With the constant change in the climate conditions and the increase in the population, it becomes challenging for farmers to choose the accurate time for doing several agriculture activities such as sowing seeds.

However, AI can help farmers understand the weather conditions by taking the help of AI-based weather forecasting systems. These systems help provide information such as choosing the right seed as per the conditions and deciding the right time for sowing seeds.

Monitoring crop health

The soil type and the nutrition present in them are crucial factors in deciding the type and quantity of the plant to be grown. Due to rising deforestation problems, the quality of the soil is getting degraded, and it is become challenging to determine the soil quality.

Plantix, an AI-based device, has been developed by a German tech company to scan pests and diseases and identify the requirements of the nutrients in the soil. The device uses image recognition technology, where farmers can click the pictures of their plants. Accordingly, the system provides tips related to crop solutions and proper plant growth using these pictures.

Similarly, another AI-based device is trace genomics which helps the farmers analyze the soil.

Such AI-based technologies can help farmers check the soil condition and increase crop production.

• Analyzing crops’ health using drones

The AI-based drones gather the data from the agriculture farms and transfer it to the required platforms quickly. This helps farmers get the required data about the farm in real time for making the right decisions.

The data provided by drones help farmers in identifying bacteria and pests on the farm and therefore accomplishing the required pest control activities for saving the crops.

• Predictive analytics and precision farming

AI has helped the agriculture sector develop several tools and applications that are helping farmers in getting proper guidance related to farms for activities such as crop rotation, water management, choosing crops, pest attacks, optimum planting, and nutrition management.

Artificial intelligence systems help analyze several images being collected by drones and satellites. With this data, AI technologies can predict the condition of the weather, analyze the sustainability of the crops, and check the presence of disease and pests in the farms. It takes the help of the collected data such as wind speed, precipitation, solar radiation, and temperature.

• Agricultural robotics

AI companies are constantly developing robots to perform several tasks in agriculture farms. These robots are trained to control the excess weed presence on the farm and harvest crops at a higher speed.

Also, such robots can check the quality of the crop and detect the presence of weed while packing the final produce.

Common Applications of AI

Following are a few of the most used AI applications in the agriculture industry:

• Fasal
• Intel air
• Farm Wise
• Root AI
• One Soil
• AGEYE technologies

Challenges in Adopting AI in Agriculture

Although AI has several benefits, various challenges are also associated with it that need to be overcome. One significant challenge that is becoming a hurdle in adopting AI in the framing sector is awareness and knowledge about AI technologies.

Many farmers are uneducated and do not have the required digital skills or enough time to learn about controlling AI devices. Therefore, due to lesser information about the need and benefits of AI, farmers are not ready to accept modern AI technologies.

However, regardless of the several challenges, AI is expected to be adopted by people in the upcoming years.

There is an increased requirement for technically more competent ecosystems for farming where government, business sector, and technology can work jointly to uplift the agriculture future with the adoption of advanced technology such as AI.

How Can AI Solve the Problem of Reducing Human Labor?

Farming is a labor-intensive occupation. A farmer needs several workers to perform different activities on the farm. Currently, most people are shifting to cities and towns searching for suitable jobs leaving agriculture sectors. It has resulted in a high shortage of manual labor in the farms.

Furthermore, only a few people choose the agriculture profession as full-time, resulting in fewer people in the agriculture sector.

AI-based bots are developing quickly to address the shortage of manual laborers. These bots can perform several tasks on agriculture farms. Also, these bots can help harvest crops at a higher speed than humans.

In addition, by using AI-based technologies, farms can run much more effectively with lower human labor. AI is also beneficial for stakeholders and farmers as it can be used across all types of works on farms.

Conclusion:

The adoption of artificial intelligence in the agriculture sector is constantly increasing. Also, AI technologies for farming are supposed to get more advanced in the coming years, helping farmers get several tasks automated in the farms.

With the dangers of environmental degradation and global warming, farmers are attracting more towards adopting precision farming over conventional methods. The AI-based system can help to provide several solutions for doing effective farming.