The 6 Most Amazing AI Advances in Agriculture (ROUNAK SARKAR)

 

When we think about agriculture, we tend to think about old-school farming. But although many of us might think that the agricultural community is behind the curve when it comes to implementing new technologies, there is lots of evidence that farmers are actually moving quite quickly to modernize almost everything about the farming process — they’re using artificial intelligence in new and amazing ways to bring the process of food cultivation into the future.

Sowing the Seeds

High-tech agriculture starts at the very second that the seed is first placed in the ground. Experts in the field are familiar with “variable rate planting equipment” that does more than just planting a seed down into the dirt somewhere.

As you’ll see later in this article, all sorts of artificial intelligence work is being done behind the scenes on predictions — where a seed will grow best, what soil conditions are likely to be, etc. The power of artificial intelligence is being applied to agricultural big data in order to make farming much more efficient — and that’s only the beginning.

Who’s Picking Your Food?

Perhaps a better question would be “What’s picking your food?” That’s right — companies are already producing robotic harvesting equipment, partially in response to labor gaps that have left farmers scrambling to harvest crops like fruits and berries.

This is a reality now. Driverless tractors are harvesting fruits and vegetables and food commodities routinely. Just check out resources from Harvest Croo, which has produced an autonomous strawberry picking machine, and Abundant Robotics, where a vacuum apparatus harvests mature apples from trees, to see how this innovation works—and works well.

Eye in the Sky

How are farms using artificial intelligence to direct crop planting, harvesting and more, and how are they getting that data in the first place?

Check out what’s happening now in agricultural research, and you can see unmanned aerial vehicles or drones being outfitted with precision sensors in order to run the fields and get the data that’s needed. These airborne surveillance engines can look for stunted crops, signs of pest or weed damage, dryness and many other variables that are part of the difficulty of farming in general. With all of this data in hand, farmers can enhance their production models and their strategies across the lay of the land to decrease risk, waste and liability.

Pest and Weed Control

Yesterday’s farmers were living in fear of the windstorm and the grasshopper — not anymore. Farmers are quickly adopting new high-tech ways of protecting plants against weeds and various kinds of pests outdoors. Another alternative is to grow in greenhouses, which is being done as well, but some of the most amazing farming technology is being deployed outside.

The “See and Spray” model acquired by John Deere recently is an excellent example of harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and computer vision.

Yield Boosting Algorithms

When we talk about machine learning and artificial intelligence, we often talk about algorithms. The mathematical models behind computer science are the fundamental basis for how we deal with big data to make decisions.

Companies are now quickly developing agricultural yield boosting algorithms that can show farmers what’s going to be best for a crop. Despite some concerns about the difficulty of doing this type of analysis in nature, farmers and others have been able to make quite a lot of headway in maximizing crop yield, simply by applying the algorithms and intelligence generators that we’ve built to help computers imitate our own cognitive abilities.

Conclusion

These are some of the best new technologies coming out to help farmers produce all the food that we need in a rapidly changing world. Population growth and climate change will be massive challenges, but artificial intelligence deployment can help blunt the impact of these and other challenges, and make smart farming much more resistant to the problems that farmers face.