By Shealyn Paulis
The future of agriculture could be more digital than expected. Researchers say that artificial technology and intelligence could be the response to future resilience and agricultural sustainability.
Technology is the key to responding to increasing requests and higher yields each year while protecting the environment that provides it, according to a recent report Through agriculture and IA researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The report shows how AI can reduce labor requirements, help sustainable agriculture and improve livestock management and precision crop management for farmers. This work could help researchers seek the key to feeding a growing world population, Vikram Adve, principal author and IT teacher at UIUC, said.
“We need a critical need to increase food production worldwide,” said Adve. “We have no more land. We have no more people because work in reduced agriculture. We do not have the luxury of environmental pollution. We must be able to deal with considerably evolving climatic conditions and it is really intimidating. ”
Test the future: I-Farm and digital agriculture
While agriculture is modernizing, tools like AI, robots, sensors and many data will help farmers do their job more efficiently, said Adve. Understanding this data and how to use it can increase the yield, health and resilience of crops.
For example, a field of research includes the development of cultures that require less nitrogen to develop, said Adve. This means that they would require fewer fertilizers, reducing costs and workforce for farmers while minimizing the runoff of fertilizers – an environmental harmful problem that degrades water quality.
“We make agricultural decisions more easily, more effectively and also with more sophisticated techniques,” said Adve.
Illinois researchers, of which Adve, make it possible to perfect these technologies in a test bench of 80 acres called I-FARM, abbreviation of Illinois Farming and Regoriative Management. They apply digital agricultural methods such as AI and robotic work to raw material crops, coverage crops and livestock using sustainable practices over a period of 3 years.
Adve is also director of AIFARM or artificial intelligence for the future institute of agricultural resilience, management and sustainability. He said they were constantly working with farmers to understand their needs and concerns. Although he was interested, he said that many were concerned about cost, complexity and efficiency.
Jeff Kirwan is a corn and soy farmer in New Windsor, Illinois, and director of the Illinois Farm Bureau board. In his farm of more than 4 thousand acres, he says that he has always been a rapid adopter of new technologies.
Kirwan said almost everything involves technology and data collection, and agriculture has very precise opportunity windows. He said that sizes and farm demands are developing, new technologies are needed to grow more acres effectively. Technology like AI and autonomous robots would help optimize these small productivity periods.
“Not only to help us be more effective, but also to help us predict problems before becoming problems, which is certainly a way for us to increase our profitability,” Kirwan said.
This is important for farmers who fight against constantly evolving and difficult to predict problems such as climate change. Kirwan said it was difficult when you don’t know what to expect, but be aware and ready to adapt help.
“It is difficult to take it into account, but we are aware of it,” said Kirwan. “It precipitates more, we must do our operations because our storm intensities tend to be higher now, with more frequency.”
Accessibility of the innovation meeting
Zeke Lundstrum was born on a generational farm and graduated from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Although he is not a farmer himself, he was raised and works with them as an integrated and integrated software engineer.
Lundstrum said accessibility is essential to help farmers in the working class. For example, many farmers already use computer vision technologies that use cameras and automatic learning to target weeds and use less herbicides.
“This is an excellent example of technology allowing the use of less chemicals for the same result,” said Lundstrum. “And it’s like an application of the real life of computer vision.”
Lundstrum said that if technology and software are available for farmers in the daily working class, they will only benefit large companies and commercial agriculture.
But technology -based solutions are crucial to increase food production to respond to ever increasing demands, Adve said. Agriculture needs more advanced solutions, agricultural practices and efficiency while remaining sustainable to feed future populations, he said.