Cory Bohlander harvests soybeans in a field north of Elwood in 2022. Bohlander and other area farmers are taking a cautious approach to emerging artificial intelligence technology, noting that questions about data privacy and other considerations must be addressed. Herald Bulletin file photo
ANDERSON — If farmers could know what the weather will be like next month, next year or even further into the future, it might change their operational decisions substantially.
That line of thinking has challenged many agriculture companies to wade into artificial technology. AI, many advocates say, holds the potential to streamline tasks from planting and irrigation to evaluating soil conditions and monitoring livestock health.
Importantly, it can also help farmers get greener.
“It’s about being able to make better decisions,” Claudia Roessler, director of agriculture at Microsoft, told a group of agriculture and business leaders at the recent Indiana Climate Summit.
“It’s about being both proactive and preventative when looking at what is to come. AI brings an advantage in being able to look at data in an unbiased way.”
Yet, the proliferation of available data in nearly every facet of farming operations can be a two-edged sword. With it, farmers can make more informed decisions than ever; but sifting through the data is intensive and time consuming.
“There’s so much to be learned with (AI) to start,” said Chris Cook, sustainable solutions business head at Syngenta, a multinational agricultural technology company that researches and sells crop protection products.
“What I think about is the volume of data we need to (analyze). It just takes time and there will be mistakes.”
Cook said he believes AI will become more critical to farmers as the world’s rising population — expected to grow from 8.1 billion currently to 9.7 billion people by 2050, according to the United Nations Population Division — and shrinking acreage put pressure on them to produce more high-quality food on less land amid more extreme weather conditions.
Optimizing the planet’s dwindling land resources is one area, Cook argues, where AI can provide farmers with actionable insights to help them develop more efficient workflows and make better use of their land.
“It all kind of links together, and AI will help us do it quicker than what we have in the past,” Cook said.
“We’ll be able to see trends sooner than what we otherwise would have seen. To me, that’s the real opportunity — can you see a trend or predict a trend quicker than you might have before?”
CHANGE IS COMING
In Indiana, where agriculture contributes an estimated $35 billion annually to the state’s economy, experts believe AI holds the potential to transform the industry’s production methods and environmental impact.
“We’re seeing the beginnings of how it will impact our sector,” said Brantley Seifers, director of national government affairs for Indiana Farm Bureau.
AI algorithms can analyze the chemical composition of soil samples to determine which nutrients may be lacking, according to research by Intellias, a global software engineering company specializing in ecosystem research.
The technology can identify and predict crop diseases. It can also trace ideal patterns for applying fertilizers and other nutrients and chart favorable times to use them.
The additional information — and farmers’ ability to leverage it into forward-looking crop rotations and soil revitalization plans — will be paramount in a state that lost 345,000 acres of farmland from 2010 to 2022, according to the Indiana State Department of Agriculture.
“For the sake of our future food security, it is … extremely important to gather more specific data on the loss of prime farmland in particular,” state Sen. Jean Leising, R-Oldenburg, said in a news release.
“We should know where this farmland is going, and whether state or local governments are investing money or providing tax benefits that further incentivize the loss of this valuable resource.”
PRIVACY CONCERNS
Government officials and environmental experts alike acknowledge that AI is moving into the mainstream across a wide spectrum of industries, including agriculture. As it does so, several potential pitfalls will need to be addressed, including privacy issues.
Currently, the state has no laws that directly address farmers’ data privacy. Seifers said any such legislation would need to be nuanced and specifically address concerns unique to the industry.
“A lot of the policy piece is going to be protecting the farmers’ information,” he said. “Who owns the data? How is the data used?
“We want to use a scalpel to make sure that if one industry is doing something, it doesn’t impact the farm side of things,” he added. “We’ll want to do it in a way that still allows our members to utilize AI in a way that will be efficient and effective on their farms.”
© 2024 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.