Agriculture nowadays is going through a major revolution. Not in all parts of the globe, but it will eventually reach every corner worldwide.
At first glance, it might be thought that in agriculture artificial intelligence is something that resembles science fiction or virtual reality. Nothing could be further from the truth. Artificial intelligence in agriculture is not artificial at all. There are countless examples today examples, devices, software, applications, etc, that are used in a variety of situations.
situations.
Precision agriculture, supported by sophisticated software, satellites, drones, and a lot of information stored in powerful computer memories is already a tool for management tool for soils, plant protection products, water, or fertilizers.
In livestock farming, forest management, red fruit production, or horticulture, where competition is fierce, resources scarce and expensive, and especially commercial commercial demands are extremely high, it is the combination of different software that makes it possible to ensure quality with the guarantee of obtaining the expected results.
But what kind of revolution is needed in agriculture today?
The USA, the biggest and most developed country in the world, will witness a major change in the future. America has been experiencing a declining level of agriculture for the last few years. American farmers are faced with a big dilemma: increase profits or increase productivity. To do this, American farmers will have to introduce genetically modified plants as fast as possible.
But it’s not only about gene editing appliances. There is also a great revolution coming from digital technologies, software, robots, and satellites that are now targeting agriculture.
Yet we all know that the best technology in the world is useless if you don’t have enough food production.
Yet, to produce more and better food faster and cheaper is now becoming a reality.
What are the prospects for modern agriculture and for farmers?
Some experts believe that in the future even farmers will disappear and that sophisticated machines will autonomously produce food. The biggest companies in the food industry are already buying huge tracts of land and aiming at producing more food by replacing human labor with robotic automation.
What are the economic prospects for farmers?
Despite the fact that modern agriculture is offering huge opportunities to farmers, still, only a few of them are getting these opportunities.
The reason is simple: lack of investment and small size of farms. To reach profitability today, you need to invest much more than a few years ago.
Artificial Intelligence and agriculture
The attributes – autonomy, learning, variability – make AI a great ally for the grower, who needs to deal with a large amount of extremely complex data every day. AI and Machine Learning can filter this data and establish relationships that are relevant.
The data can also feed into an automation tool. Thus, the grower can access and analyze information in an integrated way, which contributes to his decision-making process.
The dialogue of artificial intelligence in agriculture with areas such as computer vision and robotics that results, for example, in the use of drones – autonomous unmanned vehicles – on a farm.
The Deep Learning interface has allowed exceptional results in image recognition and has also awakened the interest of producers in the sense that it can be used to solve some problems, such as identifying diseases or counting plants.