AgriAi-Deep Learning In Agriculture

“AI is the new Electricity” – Andrew Ng*

Since the advent of 20th century electricity became the main source of invention in every major industry ranging from transportation, manufacturing to healthcare, communications and many more. Today Artificial Intelligence (AI) is bringing the same big transformation across all the major industries. The part of AI that is rapidly growing and which is driving most of these transformations is Deep Learning. Today, Deep Learning has become one of the most sought after skills in the technology world.

Agriculture is one industry where Deep Learning scientists and researchers are working with farmers to help them with their produce. The resources for farming like water, fertilizers, agricultural land etc. are becoming scarce day by day. The growth of urbanization has seen a decline in the area of arable lands in developing countries since the mid-eighties. As the resources are becoming scarcer scientists are using Deep Learning to help farmers make a better and more efficient use of the remaining resources.

Uttar Pradesh has the largest farmer population in the country. The harsh weather conditions, water scarcity, floods, procurement of land by Government to build National Highways and Expressways etc. has resulted in a decline of crop production in the state. Government can use Deep Learning to help farmers improve their produce every year. Deep learning has resulted in:

-          Improved Efficiency of Farmers

-          Identifying Crop Diseases

-          Reduction of Pesticide usage

Improved Efficiency of Farmer – Different factors like irrigation, seed, weather conditions, soil, fertilizers, weed, crop diseases etc. affect the agricultural output. IntelinAir is a leading start-up in the precision agriculture space. Their product AgMRI use images of the field captured by drones and these thousands of images are fed to their algorithms which helps the farmers detect abnormalities and unusual changes in the field. It can detect early-season weeds, nutrient deficiencies, weather damage, water stress, disease infections and insect infestations. This helps the farmers become more efficient because once the software detects the extent of the problem then the farmer can just focus on solving that particular issue.

Identifying Crop Diseases – Deep Learning has been used for the identification of crop diseases. Peat Technology provides easy solutions for crop disease diagnosis and monitoring, automated disease detection and advanced tools for automated disease detection for precision farming. Using smartphones farmers are able to detect specific crop disease with a very high accuracy.

Reduction of Pesticide usage – Blue River Technology's See and Spray technology is a pioneer in reducing the use of pesticides in farming. Computer Vision identifies every plant and then based on the plant determines a suitable treatment for it. Herbicide is then sprayed automatically by robotic nozzles on unwanted weeds and not on the plant thus keeping it free from any kind of pesticide.

These technologies are already present in Developed nations and are helping their farmers improve their crop production and saving on the resources. These technologies can be implemented in each village by the UP Government to assist the farmers in increasing their production. We can setup Farmer Assistance Units (FAU) in each district which is equipped with this kind of technology and this Unit will go to the villages and assist the farmers. Artificial Intelligence is ever evolving and with the right tools it can help the Government in many other sectors like education, electricity etc. Soil, water management, even irrigation supply management can be connected with smartphones and each FAU can become data bank for each district.

Agricultural AI or AgriAI can revolutionize the traditional agricultural practices which are currently being implemented. Farmers can grow multiple crops in the same amount of space and can monitor all the crops with the least effort. This will increase the crop production and variety thus helping the farmers and the state.

*Andrew Ng is one of the leading Deep Learning Scientist. He is the co-founder of Coursera and also is an adjunct professor at Stanford University.

Anshuman Vikram Singh also contributed to the article.