Meanwhile, we’re dealing with water shortages and global warming. Patrick Schnable, director of the Plant Sciences Institute at Iowa State University, told the BBC in March that all projections indicate climate change will cause major losses in crop yields. On top of those challenges, fewer young people are going into agriculture. The average age of U.S. farmers in 2022 was 58.1 years, up 0.6 years from 2017, according to the Department of Agriculture’s Census of Agriculture. This rising average age is part of a long-term trend. Jim Carroll, a futurist and innovations expert who regularly speaks to leading corporations about agriculture, is optimistic about using AI in the industry and thinks it could attract younger generations — such as those who spend their time playing video games, and who, he says, people may underestimate. Take the social-network farmland management game FarmVille, he tells The Rooted Journal. The game teaches players “how to run a virtual, 24-hour environment,” he says, adding that it could be a model for how farming could look in real life with the implementation of AI technologies such as autonomous vehicles — an area he says is growing “faster with farming technology than with cars.” He likens the
that “as the population continues to grow, as the world food crisis continues to become more and more severe,” the best way to feed the world’s population is “through the use of technology.” He believes there are two main societal problems to solve. The first is to help create more sustainable farming practices, and the second is to ensure food safety for the world. The smart use of AI by the agricultural industry may help us work toward those goals. And in the U.S., experts say the majority of agricultural businesses are a l r e a d y embracing AI. By November 2021, 87% of all U.S. agricultural businesses were using some form of AI in their
IN A RISK ANALYSIS PUBLISHED IN THE journal Nature Machine Intelligence in 2022, researchers wrote that there could be huge risks to using new artificial-intelligence technologies at scale to meet the challenge of feeding our growing human population in sustainable ways. “The idea of intelligent machines running farms is not science fiction,” Asaf Tzachor, from University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and one of the paper’s authors, said in the report. “Large companies are already pioneering the next generation of autonomous ag-bots and decision support systems that will replace humans in the field,” he added. He went on to point out, though, that “so far, no one seems to have asked the question, ‘are there any risks associated with a rapid deployment of agricultural AI?’” So, why is there so much interest in using artificial intelligence in agriculture? Are people just carried away by new and shiny futuristic technologies, or does the farming world actually need AI?
by Leslie Lang
From laser-focused weed control to robotic plant disease diagnosis, farmers leveraging AI technologies could hold the key to optimizing the future food supply chain.
farming operations, according to a
report from the
analytical firm RELX and
The short
the agritech software
a n s w e r
company Proagrica.
is
Lindsay Suddon, chief strategy officer at Proagrica, has said that the findings
yes;
integration of AI into agriculture as “a big, real-
illustrations by Nick Iluzada
we need it.
life virtual FarmVille,” adding that he thinks “that type of thing will draw that generation back to the farm.” Feroz Sheikh, the chief information and digital officer of the agritechnical company Syngenta Group, also thinks AI could help the agricultural industry. He told the consulting firm Gartner in 2023
show “that the ag sector is heading in the right direction in embracing technology to build in greater efficiencies.” He added that “this bodes well for the next generation of growers, who will expect technological literacy across the sector, which will only bring further success, and therefore more innovation.”
Agricultural growers are facing a labor shortage while the global population is rising. According to United Nations projections from 2022, today’s population of more than 8 billion is expected to hit 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100, which means we’ll need to produce a great deal more food.
80
81
ISSUE 01
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online