Ag Innovation

 

As farmers struggle to finish planting and replanting due to excess rain and cooler temperatures, warmer or hotter summer weather may be coming soon. Farmers are facing another challenging year. Some new Ag innovations may soon change how farming is conducted. The whole Artificial Intelligence (AI) movement and machine learning is starting to be incorporated into agriculture. Farming is labor intense but also has huge amounts of data that can be harvested from each parcel of crops to make immediate decisions. Sensors, drones, and satellites provide trillions of bits of data to the farmer and/or consultant. This data base can be analyzed almost now with computers, software, and AI systems to easily and efficiently give farmers instant information to improve crop quality and yield.

Here are some examples of how this affects agriculture, now and in the future. For predictive analysis; weather, disease and pests, and improving crop yields are important agricultural functions. Currently, a new data chip has been developed which can analyze in a few hours what the fastest computer chip could analyze running continuously for 100 years. With trillions of data points per acre; agriculture along with medical developments (cures for cancer, disease, new medical drugs), genetics, etc. would benefit from this type of analysis. For example, the weather forecast is at best 50-50, sometimes better, sometimes worse. With more data and AI (machine learning), weather forecast and variability will greatly improve. Weather predictions will improve on each acre of land and this will greatly help farmers.

With better weather predictions, disease and pest outbreaks will be easier to predict. Early signs of disease and pests will allow farmers to timely take preventative measures to prevent damage and improve crop quality and yield. Crop yield can also be monitored and predicted, allowing farmers to apply nutrients in a spoon-fed manner to optimize production.

On precision farming, water, fertilizer, and pesticides (herbicides, fungicides, insecticides) may be precisely applied. With good soil health and fertility management, less pests and disease should greatly lower the need for pesticides. Healthy crops have less insect and disease and weeds thrive when crop canopy is poor. Mother Nature does not like a vacuum, so bare soil tends to get covered with some type of vegetation, usually weeds if a crop is not growing.

New AI technology will also enhance efficiency and sustainability. By spoon-feeding crops, farmers will lose less fertilizer in runoff, soil or wind erosion. Water, fertilizer, and any pesticides will be precisely applied as needed, reducing waste. This increases productivity especially crop yield but also the quality of food eaten. Food will be much more nutrient dense in the future, which is good for livestock and human health. The environment (water quality, air quality, wildlife) should also benefit. An added benefit is that the cost of production should decrease as waste decreases.

Some specific examples of advances coming to agriculture soon include automated weed control. Sensors are already being used that identify crops from weeds. Small robots and drones can precisely spray targeted individual weeds, using only a pesticide that is needed. This reduces spray volume, cost, and over applying herbicides to terminate the weed.

AI is also coming to livestock management to monitor animal health, identify signs of illness, and to improve feed efficiency to improve muscle growth. AI can help farmers move and keep track of individual animals without physically having to monitor each animal. With labor shortages, robotics will be programmed to work 24 hours per day to help farmers with many mundane and repetitive farm tasks. For homeowners; washing clothes, dishes, sweeping, cleaning windows, mowing, weeding the garden, etc. are all chores that can and are already being programmed. We may be soon entering a new Era typified by the Cartoon: The Jetson’s!

Other areas where AI is having a big influence is in research and development. AI is already being used to develop crops that can adapt to a changing climate. AI is also being used with the new software to analyze solutions to problems almost instantly. It takes tremendous computing power and energy to analyze trillions of bits of data per acre, but the faster analysis makes prediction for future events easier. Farmers and homeowners can react quicker to those predictions which will be much better than our current weather forecasts!

Just like the horse was replaced by the tractor; now robots and AI are quite quickly changing the face of agriculture. Just like in the past, some farmers will still use horses (like the Amish) and many will still use tractors; but soon robots and AI technologies will have a much larger impact on modern agriculture.