2022 Spring Farm Outlook

Page 32 Spring 2022 Logan County Farm Outlook LINCOLN DAILY NEWS March / April 2022 Spring 2022 Logan County Farm Outlook LINCOLN DAILY NEWS March / April 2022 Page 33 insights from their field, allowing them to be proactive. AI offers predictive insights for forecasting weather data, crop yield, and prices, thereby helping farmers make informed decisions. Chatbots, like a farmers’Alexa, give suggestions and input recommendations to farmers. AI and ML algorithms automate anomaly and disease recognition in plants and livestock. This allows timely detection and corrective response if required. Biotechnology also deploys ML algorithms for gene selection recommendations. Further, AI provides easy access to finance to creditors who are denied mainstream credit. Startups are exploiting AI in several ways to come up with innovative solutions that improve overall agricultural quality. For example, harvest quality vision (HQV) is a recent agritech innovation that scans and determines the quality and quantity of fruits and vegetables.*3” AI can be setup to respond to sensor input with pre-programmed policies that make it appear that the computer is “making decisions” about what reaction should be made given a certain correlation of data. As AI continues to develop, large collected data sets will further enable “the computer” to increasingly appear to be making decisions on its own. 4. Precision agriculture Common practices of farming in the past meant that farmers used the “we always did it this way” traditional method of timing, measure and schedule of fertilizer and pesticide application which did little to contain costs or produce better yields. With a growing focus on increased profits instead of myopic focus on increased yield, precision agriculture provides a better model. “It is a method in which farmers use exact amounts of input, such as water, pesticides, and fertilizers, to enhance the quality and productivity of yield.*3” Precision application of these inputs produces better results. “Different tracts of land across the field have different soil properties, receive different sunlight, or have different slopes. The same treatment for the whole farm, thus, is inefficient and leads to a wastage of time and resources. Consequently, many startups are developing solutions in precision agriculture to improve profitability while addressing sustainability challenges.*3” Coupled with sensors, internet connectedness, field mapping and methods of imaging, precision agriculture becomes a measured science instead of haphazard guesswork to raise profits and better contain costs. 5. Agricultural robotics Labor shortages are both local and national problems on the farm. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find applicants for boring, repetitive manual labor jobs. Many of Continue 8