The agricultural industry is experiencing a technological revolution as growers are adopting precision agriculture practices based on AI and IoT gadgets. This shift is revolutionalizing conventional farming processes and is resulting into increased food production, minimized environmental effects, and increased returns to the farmers globally.
According to the USDA data that was recently released, the use of precision agriculture technology has increased by 40% in the last two years. Farmers are using everything from GPS-guided tractors and drones to soil sensors and artificial intelligence crop management systems to get the most out of every element of the business.
In the current years, one of the most enhanced fields has been the predictive analytics. AI applications in agriculture help in calculating crop yields by using satellite data combined with weather stations and in-field sensors. It helps farmers in decision making of planting, use of fertilizers and the period of harvesting hence increasing the yields and decreasing wastage.
Global agricultural equipment maker John Deere has introduced its new generation of smart tractors with features such as computer vision and machine learning. These tractors are capable of moving on fields, identifying and eradicating weeds selectively and adapting to soil and crop conditions of the field. A company is also eager to share information about the improvement of productivity by 10-20% as well as the decrease in herbicide utilization among the first customers who chose to implement this technology.
Unmanned aerial vehicles are being used in agriculture with the primary goal of improving accuracy. These aerial vehicles are fitted with multispectral cameras and image analysis software which helps in detecting problems such as pest attacks, nutrient deficiencies or water supply issues which are not easily visible to the human eye in large tracts of farmland. This capability enables farmers to respond to these problems early enough, and can even help salvage an entire crop.
Smart devices are already changing the processes of irrigating crops, which are one of the most water-consuming activities in the sphere of agriculture. For instance, smart irrigation systems involve the use of soil moisture sensors, weather data and artificial intelligence to ensure crops receive the right amount of water at the right time. According to the farmers, they are able to save up to 30% of the water used for irrigation while at the same time enhancing the quality and quantity of the produce.
Another form of farming, which is vertical farming, involves the growing of crops in indoor controlled systems, and it is also embracing AI and IoT. These systems employ sophisticated sensors as well as machine learning algorithms to control the conditions favorable for growth such as light, temperature, humidity and nutrients. For this reason, one can grow crops in the vertical farm all the year round using minimum water and land in comparison with the conventional methods.
Precision agriculture technologies are not a preserve of large scale industrial farming practices. Even the small family farms are also adopting these tools, in most cases through cooperative structures or service providers who have made the technology more affordable. This democratization of the technology is aiding in the balancing of the scales in an industry that has been largely controlled by the big agricultural businesses.
Nevertheless, the use of these technologies is not without its problems due to the current high rate of adoption. New risks of data privacy and security have arisen as farmers gather and store more and more data about their businesses. Some concerns are also associated with technology lock-in, which means that farmers become tied to proprietary systems from a single vendor.
To overcome these problems, stakeholders and policy makers are coming up with standards for data exchange and integration of different precision agriculture systems. The goal is to make it an open platform that will enable farmers to be able to select the best tools to use in farming without being compelled to go to a certain vendor.
Education and training are also the other important factors that are associated with the revolution in precision agriculture. Extension services and agricultural schools are revisiting their programs and including data analysis, AI and IoT into the curriculum. Some are getting into strategic alliances with technology companies to get practical experience with the current technologies.
With the advancement of technology in precision agriculture, the system holds a lot of potential to help solve some of the major issues affecting the world’s food system. These technologies could therefore aid in feeding the growing world population through efficient use of resources, minimizing on the harm that is caused to the environment and increasing on the yields.
The future years will most probably witness further advancements in the integration of AI and IoT in agricultural processes and thus the continuous revolutionization of one of the oldest and most critical industries for human existence.
