This article was published as part of the Data Science Blogathon.
Overview
- Agriculture life cycle
- Challenges of agriculture with traditional agricultural techniques.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is based on the principle that human intelligence can be defined in such a way that a machine can easily imitate it and perform tasks, from the simplest to the most complex. The goals of artificial intelligence include learning, reasoning and perception.
“We are at the beginning of a golden age of AI. Recent advances have already led to the invention that previously lived in the realm of science fiction, and we've only scratched the surface of what's possible “.
– JEFF BEZOS, CEO of Amazon
Some examples, vision recognition systems in autonomous cars, on recommendation engines suggesting products you might like based on what you bought in the past, voice and language recognition of the virtual assistant Siri on the Apple iPhone.
AI is having a huge impact across all industry domains. All industries seek to automate certain jobs through the use of smart machinery. And a good Online artificial intelligence course it's all you need to get into any industry. Even agriculture!
Agriculture and livestock are one of the oldest and most important professions in the world. Plays an important role in the economic sector. All over the world, agriculture is an industry of 5 billions of dollars.
The world population is expected to reach more than nine billion by 2050, which will require an increase in agricultural production in a 70% to meet the demand. As the world population increases because the earth, water and resources become insufficient to continue the supply and demand chain. Therefore, we need a smarter approach and be more efficient about how we farm and can be more productive.
In this article, I will cover the challenges farmers face when using traditional farming methods and how Artificial Intelligence is making a revolution in agriculture by replacing traditional methods by using more efficient methods and helping the world become a better place.
Agriculture life cycle
We can divide the Agriculture Process into different parts:
Soil preparation: It is the initial stage of agriculture where farmers prepare the soil for sowing seeds. This process involves breaking up large clumps of dirt and removing debris, like sticks, rocks and roots. What's more, adding fertilizers and organic matter will depend on the type of crop to create an ideal situation for the crops.
Sowing seeds: This stage requires taking care of the distance between two seeds, depth to plant seeds. At this stage the climatic conditions such as temperature, humidity and rainfall play an important role.
Adding fertilizers: Maintaining soil fertility is an important factor for the farmer to continue growing nutritious and healthy crops. Farmers turn to fertilizers because these substances contain plant nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Fertilizers are simply planted nutrients that are applied to agricultural fields to supplement the necessary elements naturally found in the soil.. This stage also determines the quality of the crop.
Irrigation: This stage helps to keep the soil moist and maintain moisture.. Insufficient or excessive irrigation can hinder crop growth and, if not done correctly, can cause crop damage.
Weed protection: Weeds are unwanted plants that grow near crops or on farm boundaries. It is important to consider protection against weeds, as weeds reduce yields, increase the cost of production, interfere with the harvest and decrease the quality of crops.
Harvest: It is the process of harvesting mature crops from the fields. Requires many workers for this activity, making it a labor intensive activity. This stage also includes postharvest handling such as cleaning., classification, packing and cooling.
Storage: This phase of the post-harvest system during which the products are maintained in such a way as to guarantee food safety outside the periods of agriculture. Also includes packaging and transportation of crops.
Challenges faced by farmers using traditional farming methods
List the general challenges that exist in agriculture.
O In the agriculture, climatic factors such as rain, temperature and humidity play an important role in the life cycle of agriculture. Increased deforestation and pollution cause climate change, making it difficult for farmers to make decisions to prepare the soil, sow seeds and reap.
O Each crop requires specific nutrition in the soil. There is 3 main nutrients: nitrogen (N), match (P) and potassium (K) that are required on the ground. Nutrient deficiency can lead to poor quality of crops.
O As we can see in the life cycle of agriculture, weed protection plays an important role. If not controlled, can lead to an increase in the cost of production and also absorbs nutrients from the soil that can cause nutritional deficiencies in the soil.
Applications of artificial intelligence in agriculture
Industry is turning to artificial intelligence technologies to help grow healthier crops, control pests, monitor soil and growing conditions, organize data for farmers, assist with workload and enhance a wide range of agriculture-related tasks throughout the food supply chain. .
Using the weather forecast: With the change in weather conditions and increasing pollution, it is difficult for farmers to determine the right time to sow seeds; with the help of artificial intelligence, farmers can analyze weather conditions using weather forecasts that help them plan what type of crop can be grown and when it should be grown. sowing seeds.
Soil and crop health monitoring system: Soil type and soil nutrition play an important factor in the type of crop being grown and the quality of the crop.. Due to increased deforestation, soil quality is degrading and soil quality is difficult to determine.
A Germany-based tech startup, PEAT, has developed an application based on artificial intelligence called Plantix that can identify nutrient deficiencies in the soil, including plant pests and diseases, so farmers can also have an idea to use fertilizers that help to improve the quality of the harvest. This application uses technology based on image recognition. Farmer can capture images of plants using smart phones. We can also see soil restoration techniques with tips and other solutions through short videos about this application.
In the same way, Trace Genomics is another machine learning based company helping farmers to perform soil analysis on farmers. This type of application helps farmers to monitor soil and crop health conditions and produce healthy crops with a higher level of productivity..
Analyzing crop health by drones: SkySqurrel Technologies has brought in drone-based Ariel imaging solutions to monitor crop health. In this technique, the drone captures data from the fields and then the data is transferred via USB drive from the drone to a computer and analyzed by experts.
This company uses algorithms to analyze the captured images and provide a detailed report containing the current status of the farm.. Helps the farmer to identify pests and bacteria by helping farmers to use timely pest control and other methods to take necessary action.
Precision agriculture and predictive analytics: AI applications in agriculture have developed applications and tools that help farmers to conduct inaccurate and controlled farming by providing proper guidance on water management, crop rotation, the timely harvest, the type of crop to be grown, optimal planting, pest attacks, nutrition management.
By using machine learning algorithms in connection with images captured by satellites and drones, AI-enabled technologies predict weather conditions, analyze the sustainability of crops and evaluate farms to detect the presence of diseases or pests and poor plant nutrition on farms with data such as temperature, precipitation, wind speed and solar radiation.
Farmers without connectivity can benefit from AI right now, with tools as simple as an SMS-enabled phone and the Sowing app. Meanwhile, farmers with Wi-Fi access can use AI apps to get a custom AI plan for their land. With these solutions powered by IoT and AI, farmers can meet global needs to increase food production and income sustainably without depleting precious natural resources.
In the future, AI will help farmers become agricultural technologists, using data to optimize yields in individual rows of plants.
Agricultural robotics: Artificial intelligence companies are developing robots that can easily multitask in agricultural fields. This type of robot is trained to control weeds and harvest crops at a faster rate with higher volumes compared to humans.
These types of robots are trained to verify the quality of the crops and detect weeds with harvesting and packing of crops at the same time.. These robots are also capable of dealing with the challenges faced by the agricultural workforce..
AI-enabled system to detect pests: Pests are one of the worst enemies of farmers that damage crops.
AI systems use satellite images and compare them with historical data using AI algorithms and detect if any insect has landed and what kind of insect has landed like lobster, Grasshopper, etc. And they send alerts to farmers on their smartphones so that farmers can take the required precautions and use require pest control., so AI helps farmers fight pests.
Conclution
Artificial intelligence in agriculture not only helps farmers automate their agriculture, it also switches to a precise crop for higher yields and better crop quality while using fewer resources.
Companies involved in improving machine learning or artificial intelligence-based products or services, as training data for agriculture, drones and automated machine manufacturing, will get technological breakthroughs in the future, will provide more useful applications to this sector, helping the world deal with food production problems for the growing population.
