• Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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BusinessDay

Technologies making agriculture, farming smarter

Greenhouse-agriculture

In a future that promises population explosion, rapid climate change and food insecurity, we are constantly reminded of the huge role that technology has to play and how we must continue to develop and apply new technologies to meet the needs of man.

Technology is already playing a big role in the field of agriculture and this article covers some of the more prominent ones.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is slowly creeping on us and gradually replacing tasks requiring human intelligence. Tasks that require visual perception, speech recognition and language translation can now be done by a computer just as well as a human.

There are three broad categories of the application of Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture; Agricultural robotics, Soil and Crop monitoring and Predictive Analysis.

Recently, an AI was developed by a team of researchers to identify diseases and pests in plant using a technique called Transfer learning. They were able to build a library of 2,756 images of cassava leaves right from plants on the field in Tanzania, then trained the system to recognize damage from ailments like cassava brown streak disease and cassava mosaic disease, plus the ravages of mites. In the end, the AI was able to identify brown leaf spot with 98 percent accuracy and red mites at 96 percent.

Big data

The term ‘big data’ isn’t new. Companies have long been using data to study specific consumer trends and using that trend to map out product design, customer engagement, marketing strategy, and even sales copy. The big idea is, if you speak the language of your customers, you are more likely to get higher conversions.

The potential for big data is enormous and has opened up new frontiers in the field of agriculture. As it applies to crops and animals; the emergence of AI has led to farmers increasingly using sensors and soil sampling to monitor how crops react to different planting techniques. Precise geographical location data can also be collected with GPS systems. This data aggregated over a number of years can be processed and applied to predictive farming where farmers can apply fertilizers exactly where it is needed without guessing.

3D printing

In order to improve efficiency in any field, there has to be a continuous push towards innovation. The final technology addressed in this article is 3D printing, an additive manufacturing process in which a digital file directs the printer to lay down successive layers of liquid, powder, paper or even steel to make a three-dimensional, solid object.

There are a number of ways in which 3D printing can improve agriculture. For example, installing a robust irrigation system can be costly but with 3D printing, farmers can print polymer pipes from which water flows out. This provides a cost-effective and eco-friendly way to deal with irrigation problems. Tractor machine parts can also be 3D-printed possibly reducing the cost and time to replace specialized equipment.

Opportunities abound to create technology products that will revolutionise the agriculture industry. The question is, will prospective or current farmers, the Government, and Nigerian investors take advantage?

 

HANNAH EDIA

Edia is a Content Developer and SEO Strategist at Farmcrowdy.