Blog Post
Smart farming: The impact of IoT and AI on agriculture
Adapt Ideations • Aug 26, 2019
To combat the growing population, farmers and innovators alike will have to come together to put in place strategies to help farmers meet increasing production demands.
The United Nations
has highlighted our current global population statistic is 7.6 billion people. It’s believed we will reach 11.2 billion by 2100. Population growth may not bother many, but in fact, we may have an inevitable problem amongst us, how will the growing population be fed and how will this be sustainable for farmers around the world and producers of food.
To combat the growing population, farmers and innovators alike will have to come together to put in place strategies to help farmers meet increasing production demands. With many pain points for farmers such as little additional land, extreme weather conditions, natural disasters, climate change, and natural environmental change farming practices are becoming harder. An article published by BBC Food
has suggested that the global population needs to move away from consuming animal products to save further land from being used ultimately leading to a reduction of up to 49% of greenhouse gas emissions. Even though this has been suggested, it may not be the answer to the current growing population problem at hand.
With emerging technology continuously evolving over the last few years we have seen the emergence of the term smart agriculture. As the term suggests smart agriculture relies on the use of emerging technology such as IoT and AI to improve agricultural practices allowing farming practices to decrease the need for intense manual labour as previously required. By incorporating the use of emerging technology insights can be formed effectively from data collected with the use of analytics allowing farming practices to be revolutionised.
By revolutionising the agricultural industry with emerging technology, it will more than assist farmers to increase their food production for the growing population. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
has estimated that a third of all food produced globally is lost or goes to waste. It’s more than ever that the agricultural industry needs to be revolutionised to solve the issues at hand. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
also highlights that an expected increase of 70% in food production is needed to feed the growing population, it is now or never for the agricultural industry to use emerging technology to their benefit.
Over the decades the agricultural industry has realised that they must go from industrial-scale farming to precision farming. Of course, industrial-scale farming has its own benefits when first implemented however the downfalls also came to light as well soon after such as high levels of inputs, overarching development to pesticides and herbicides and the use of larger expensive and potential environmentally damaging machinery essentially affecting a crop’s ability to develop a healthy root system.
On the other hand, precision agriculture or smart farming as described above is a sustainable alternative that will allow for intensification to occur in a more environmentally friendly manner. The technique relies on emerging technology such as sensors, devices, AI, ML, and analytics to revolutionise farming practices. The impact is not only felt by the environment but also by farmers as their every-day activities slowly move away from intense labour to gaining knowledge analysed by emerging technology allowing them to focus on what needs the most attention in the present moment.
AI and IoT are coming together in more ways than imaginable. AI is assisting IoT in enabling real-time data analytics to help make informed decisions. For example, agricultural devices are now enabling data to be collected allowing for more effective crop spraying, land management and even surveillance of the land. By incorporating the use of AI into everyday processes, it will enable long term improvements to be achievable for farmers looking to improve greater production outputs.
The Business Insider states that On Farm
believes that by 2050 the average farm will generate 4.1 million data points each day. Imagine the ease this will bring to a farmer’s working life as the data will be transformed into insights about the land for them through the combination of IoT and AI together. The combination of these elements together will significantly allow farmers to easily modify their processes to achieve optimal output. It will not only help immediately but also in the future as AI will allow farmers to predict future patterns such as weather, pricing predictions, and even historic data.
All in all, precision farming will allow farmers to gain a deeper understanding and knowledge of their land enabling them to become more sustainable while being able to increase their productivity. AI and IoT coming together may just be the answer that farmers are looking for with the increased expectation of greater total production to combat the growing population, not to mention the increasing expectation of sustainable practices from suppliers along every aspect of the supply chain.
It’s important to understand that the agricultural industry will need to evolve with the use of emerging technology to overcome the challenge of the growing population. Without the use of emerging technology, the industry itself may very well fall much behind every other industry transforming. The use of emerging technology will allow the industry to successfully see many benefits such as reducing costs, wastage, and achieving greater sustainable practices. IoT and AI will be essential for the agricultural industry to keep up with the growing population making it possible to meet the required increase in production and productivity.
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