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Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are able to collect and analyze data and make predictions, such as soil analysis, through the use of soil sensors. AI can also manage fertilizer applications and much more.
Alexis Stevens said the “wave of the future is already here.”
She’s talking about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in agriculture, and the importance of governing it with cybersecurity.
Stevens, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach farm management specialist from Jefferson, said the use of cybersecurity and AI among ag producers was at less than 10 percent in 2015, and has grown to more than 60 percent across the ag sector as of 2023.
“I am incredibly excited about the future of agriculture,” said Stevens. “I call myself an ‘ag futurist’ because I think about how agriculture is going to change so much, and how it’s already changed.”
She said AI tools are able to collect and analyze data and make predictions, such as soil analysis, through the use of soil sensors. It evaluates soil composition, pH levels and moisture to recommend the best planting strategies. Sensors can also monitor soil moisture, and AI can schedule watering to reduce waste and ensure adequate hydration.
Fertilizer can also be managed through AI, avoiding overapplication and minimizing environmental impact.
Stevens said AI can help farmers choose seeds that will work best in their growing conditions through genetic analysis and recommendations of planting densities.
“AI takes all of a farm’s history and all the genetic information that an agronomist or seed dealer might have, so you have the best agronomist in your back pocket when you use AI,” she said, adding that AI can help with genetic selections to match specific growing areas, which can be useful for people with less knowledge of agronomic issues.
She said AI is especially useful for crop monitoring with tools like drones, satellites and sensors to help see under the canopy to detect possible diseases and pest issues before they become a big problem, and nutrient deficiency.
“By the time you recognize some diseases in the field when you go out and walk them, it’s too late — you’ve got yield loss or have lost a whole field,” she said. “Imagine if you had 10 extra days to decide if you needed to spray. AI can return yield back to the farmer because disease issues can be caught a lot sooner.”
Stevens said the wave of the future will include more drones applying fertilizer and chemicals and fewer tractors and sprayers. She went as far as to say that, while that kind of drone might be an investment of $50,000, a tractor and sprayer might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. She said less labor is needed when using AI to apply fertilizer and chemicals — a cost-saver for producers. This also eliminates the stress of finding farm labor and someone who is confident in their ability to run a sprayer.
“AI also takes a human being out of the driver’s seat, which takes them away from the chemicals so there is less exposure to those operating the equipment,” she said.
Stevens said yield prediction technology is here already, with tools that analyze historical data, weather patterns and soil health to predict crop yields.
“Right now there are companies that have AI modeling tools that can go out into your corn field in early August and can predict within 3 percent accuracy what your yields will be, if all things were constant and weather patterns were similar to what they normally are,” she said. “They may even be more accurate than USDA yield predictions.”
She said being able to predict with that degree of accuracy what corn and soybean yields might be would give producers an edge in being able to confidently market their grain.
Stevens, a fifth-generation farmer, said having access to a field’s history is something that doesn’t have to go away with AI.
“Typically, when someone passes, all those years of agronomic knowledge are gone,” she said. “With AI, you can still have all that information in one tiny device or app, and that’s powerful. That will be incredibly beneficial to young people as they move into farming — they may not have that long history, but they can have that tool to give them the history.”
Stevens said automation is present in nearly every area of agriculture today. Autonomous farm equipment is in use, but she said it still needs some improvements before being widely used — such as the ability to override the automation to drive a piece of equipment manually if necessary. Inability to connect to the cloud from everywhere is also a problem in many areas of Iowa.
The up side to operator automation in equipment is that it can detect if debris is in the way of a machine, and in another area, can also give a producer more time with his/her family if they don’t have to be in the tractor all the time.
“We don’t have to work such long hours and work ourselves to death at harvest
time,” Stevens said.
She said AI allocates resources efficiently for areas such as energy use, optimizing the use of power for equipment and irrigation systems, labor management, forecasting labor needs based on workload predictions, and scheduling tasks accordingly.
Stevens said AI identifies risks to crop production and suggests risk mitigation strategies, such as for climate change and market analysis. She said it doesn’t matter whether or not producers believe climate change is real, since the government is forging ahead in their charge that it is real.
She said AI can integrate data from all devices across the farm.
“It brings all kinds of apps together to create one big farm brain to connect all things together for best decision-making,” said Stevens.
Livestock
She said AI can help in meat production with health monitoring and early disease detection, nutrition management, optimal breeding schedules, precision livestock farming (smart barns); disease outbreak prediction/control, and financial optimization.
Stevens said dairy farms have outpaced most of production agriculture in terms of getting on board with AI because they have had to. She said with so much happening at dairy farms, it helps with optimizing feeding schedules, monitoring health and detecting disease, along with boosting production.
Automated milking tracks milk quality and quantity, pays attention to the needs of each cow specifically, and that smart breeding improves milk yield, fertility and herd longevity.
“You guys are light years ahead of the rest of us,” she said, adding that (especially with dairy milk), people want to know their food is safe. “People think, ‘It’s all poison,’ or ‘We’ve been lied to.’ AI allows traceability of what’s actually in the (food) supply, and there’s power in that.”
Fraud
Stevens said agriculturalists must be vigilant about cybersecurity on their farms, since cyber criminals don’t typically go after the large box stores or internet chains. She said they usually target businesses with fewer than 10 employees because they think they are too small for someone to go after them.
Often, she said, a cyber criminal may have hacked into a bank account without the owner knowing it, and it might take most of the year before anyone notices it.
“An antivirus system may not always catch a financial breach — the average cost of a data breach could be more than $4 million,” she said. “If that happens, you would have to start selling farms.”
Alarmingly, she said 82 percent of cybersecurity data breaches involve human error.
“I may have done something wrong that I didn’t know,” she said, adding that people should always check in personally with financial institutions or places of business that ask for personal information, and to think twice before giving that information out over the internet.
“Once you click in the link they send, they’re in,” Stevens said of personal bank accounts.
She advised people to know what phishing is, and to be cautious about clicking on email attachments — cyber criminals often convincingly pose as people with whom business is done.
Stevens said passwords are important, along with any two-step process to access account information, since it’s all to help protect against cyber criminals. She said passwords need to be long and or complex, changed every so often, and never reused.
“It’s not a matter of IF it happens, but WHEN,” she warned. “Have a plan for if you somehow have no access to your smartphone, and backup your information often. Have a plan for a time when the internet is down and you can’t get to your planting data — things like that.”