Application of AI in Agriculture

The above pictures are from the World Plowing Championships on the South Island of New Zealand in April, 2010.  A most gracious host who was the owner of South Pacific Seed housed us and took us to see this.  But, let me fill you in on what you see above and what significance it has to me.

I grew up in the Heartland of America, the center of Kansas.  Our calendar and indeed much of our culture was centered on agriculture and the seasons.  Many of our families had farm land even if we didn't personally farm it, so we grew up learning acreage, the meaning of river bottom land, crop yields, wheat weight, etc.  I personally was not a farm kid, but even I have plowed fields with a tractor and have been a worker getting wheat from the fields into a grain elevator.  So, knowing this, our host thought I might be interested to see the actual World Championships of Plowing, something I didn't even know existed.

There were different competitive classes, classes of tractor and plow implements and the more mechanical actual plowing by horse-pulled plow.  And aren't those horses magnificent, powerful and dignified!  Regardless of which class it was, the judgment was based on even depth of the furrows, alignment of the furrows, etc.  For the best planting, these are absolutely essential elements and the furrows you see above are the true Olympics of the plowing art and science!  As an amateur put in the field on a tractor, I can tell you how difficult and skilled the perfection you see above actually is.

So, what does any of this have to do with AI in agriculture?  Well, a boyhood friend who used to live on one of those farms when I was little told me how his young nephew now farms his land.  He has a tractor with a GPS and he positions the tractor only in general terms and then allows the tractor to align and plow virtually perfect furrows. maximal use of his acreage, highest crop yield.  What you see in the pictures above could, in other words, be accomplished by a computer nerd like me with the push of a button, sitting in my air conditioning listening to stereo in the cab.

What is gained in this process?  Why, precision and yield of grain from the land.  But, as is always the case with technological progress, what is lost is the "culture" in agriculture.  Now, it is agritechnology and there is no need to get hands dirty or develop a "farmer's suntan" where your head is totally white above the cap line and the rest of the face is weathered, like a piece of finely worn leather.  Fewer people need man the equipment and corporations can run multiple farms with no need of something like a farmhouse.  You only need a place to park the vehicles between use.

Even assessment of the land, knowing when irrigation is needed and precisely how much is feasible in my mind.  Sending drones to survey crops, self-driving vehicles automatically dispatched for fertilization, planting, harvesting and plowing back under seems possible.  Indeed, ultimately, it seems to me that no one actually would ever need to go to a plot of land, just keep technicians available and a central control location.

Farmers as we have known them will probably become a thing of the past over time.  Even the gathering at the supply stores and the grain elevators where the conversations are a unique combination of law and order, morality and pragmatism may be lost.  We keep this up and they will be a collection of computer jockeys with cokes and candy bars and, to the extent they care about the world at all, they will be <gasp> liberals! 

Please check out my other blog mates' takes on the same topic brought to us by Sanjana at their blogs, Padmum, Raju, Ramana, Sanjana and Shackman!