Until recently, artificial intelligence was a concept that appeared mainly in science fiction movies. Now, seemingly overnight, it has become the only topic of conversation in the tech industry, and Wall Street is also intrigued. According to researchers at the University of Bonn, the next application of AI could be to make agriculture more efficient, SciTechDaily reported.
The researchers published their speculations in the European Journal of Agronomy in an article titled “Research priorities for using smart digital technologies for sustainable crop production.”
As with anything related to AI, some of the details are a little vague. For example, the paper lists “using artificial intelligence to link process and data-driven methods” as one of the four keys to deploying “smart digital technology” in agriculture, and “improving decision-making and intervention in crop production” as another.
However, the study also provides some more concrete examples of AI being used. In one of these examples, researchers used sensors buried in the soil to create a “digital twin” of a crop field and use it to determine when to add fertilizer to the soil.
“In the medium term, this will make it possible to adapt the amount of nitrogen fertilizer to the needs of the crops in real time, depending on the nutrient richness of a location,” says Professor Cyrill Stachniss from the University of Bonn.
Agriculture around the world faces countless threats and challenges: from pollution caused by fertilizer and pesticide use, to crop-destroying insects that adapt to these pesticides, to rising global temperatures that make certain areas uninhabitable for growing crops.
Farmers today need to be more efficient and precise in their decisions than ever before – and show a greater willingness to adapt to new practices as conditions around them change rapidly.
“In the future, we need to focus more on the question of what framework conditions are needed to achieve this level of acceptance,” says Professor Heiner Kuhlmann from the University of Bonn. “For example, we could offer financial incentives or set legal limits on the use of fertilizers.”
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