Until recently, artificial intelligence was a concept that mostly popped up in science-fiction movies. Now, seemingly overnight, it has become the only thing people in the tech industry can talk about, with Wall Street similarly transfixed. According to researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany, the next application for AI could be making agriculture more efficient, SciTechDaily reported.
The researchers published their speculation in the European Journal of Agronomy in a paper titled "Research priorities to leverage smart digital technologies for sustainable crop production."
As with anything AI-related, some of the specifics are a bit vague — for instance, the paper identifies one of the four keys to using "smart digital technology" in agriculture as "using artificial intelligence for linking process and data-driven methods" and another as "improving decision making and intervention in plant production."
However, the research also notes a few more concrete examples of AI usage. In one, the researchers used sensors buried in soil to create a "digital twin" of an area under cultivation, and used that to determine when to release fertilizers into the soil.
"In the medium term, this will enable levels of nitrogen fertilizer being applied to be adapted to crops' needs in real time depending on how nutrient-rich a particular spot is," University of Bonn Professor Cyrill Stachniss said.
Global agriculture faces myriad threats and challenges, from pollution caused by fertilizer and pesticide use, to crop-destroying insects adapting to those pesticides, to rising global temperatures making certain areas inhospitable to crops.
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Farmers must now be more efficient and precise with their decisions than ever — and be more willing to adapt to new ways of doing things as the conditions around them change rapidly.
"Going forward, we'll have to focus more on the question of what underlying conditions are needed to secure this acceptance [from farmers]," said University of Bonn Professor Heiner Kuhlmann. "You could offer financial incentives or set legal limits on using fertilizer, for instance."
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