Even in the last week or two weeks, we’ve seen a huge change in how humans and AI communicate,” Earles said.
Earles said he opened an app Tuesday night and offered a scenario of an Iowa farmer who found a small worm infesting a soybean field. AI immediately came back with five options, but the app also asked if an image was available. “This is just like talking to a person, right?” he said. “So, I showed an image of what I know to be this type of worm and it correctly identified this type of worm.”
Earles then suggested AI had the ability to become “AI advisors” to farmers, but the models still need to be trained to give proper recommendations.
DEERE ‘SEE AND SPRAY’
Jahmy Hindman, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Deere & Co., said Deere currently connects more than 650,000 machines globally using cellular networks. That allows data collected during planting and harvesting to be sent to cloud storage for analysis.
Hindman and others indicated some of the challenges right now remain connectivity problems in rural America including in the field.
Hindman also talked about Deere’s “see and spray technology” that uses cameras to scan for weeds using artificial intelligence and spray only where needed. The technology has been used in roughly 275,000 acres of corn, soybeans and cotton to reduce 2 million gallons of herbicide use.
“But reducing herbicide use is just the start of AI’s potential in agriculture,” Hindman said, pointing to other technologies such as autonomous tillage.
PITCHING FOR FARM BILL FUNDING
Hindman then called on Congress to include proposals in the farm bill such as the Precision Ag Loan Act and the Producing Responsible Energy and Conservation Incentives and Solutions for the Environment (PRECISE) Act. Both bills would open up USDA’s loan programs and conservation cost-share programs to allow more farmers to buy precision farming equipment.
“U.S. farmers would benefit greatly from incentives to help them acquire the precision technology needed to do their jobs more efficiently and sustainability,” Hindman said.
Multiple senators referenced the two different bills and need to consider adding them to the farm bill.
Sanjeev Krishnan, chief investment officer for S2G Ventures in Chicago, said federal funding is needed to help scale these technologies in precision agriculture. Such funding would help “de-risk” the scaling of new technologies, “but also create longer-term decision-making focused on soil health and sustainability,” Krishnan said. “So, I think it’s a really important area for public policy to get involved in to give farmers not just the tools, but the financing to increase yield per acre and profit per acre.”
Looking at outside investment in agriculture, Krishnan said venture capital in agricultural technology has drawn more interest but still lags behind other industries. That investment has gone from less than $1 billion a decade ago to peaking at about $12 billion a year, but right now is closer to $6 billion year-to-date. Agriculture remains a small slice of the venture capital space. Only about 3% of venture capital is invested in “ag tech,” he said.
PRIVACY PROTECTION
Todd Janzen, an attorney in Indiana, also is an administrator for the Ag Data Transparent Organization — a group that certifies companies that are transparent about how they collect and use farmers’ data. Janzen pointed to various tools farmers already use and the data collected from farmers in the process. Janzen noted farmers are sensitive about sharing their data, “and they have a good reason to be so.”
Farmers lack trust in the cloud-based platforms and have privacy concerns about their proprietary data. A lot of agreements also are “overly complex,” making it difficult for farmers to understand the kind of data they must share. Farmers should know when they sign up for AI platforms if their information is going to be used to train the AI platform and what is in it for farmers.
“Farming is their livelihood so I think they have a reason to be skeptical of just turning over all of this information about their livelihoods over to third parties,” Janzen said.
CYBERSECURITY RISKS
Jose-Maria Griffiths, president of Dakota State University in Madison, S.D., emphasized some of the risks of artificial intelligence still come down to a set of algorithms that are subject to hacking and cybersecurity attacks. She talked about Ukrainian farmers’ tractors basically becoming frozen in place right before Russia launched its attack on Ukraine nearly three years ago as one example. The tractors’ systems had been attacked.
As AI evolves, that data spreads across the sector, Griffiths said. That also increases the “threat landscape” as networks develop more points where the system can be attacked, she said. More work is needed to protect agricultural data through tools such as encryption, she said. That goes beyond machinery to the seeds, their treatments and inputs for seeds, she said.
“You can’t separate any new technology these days from cybersecurity,” Griffiths said. “The two have to go together.”
The full hearing can be watched at https://www.agriculture.senate.gov/…
Also see “Artificial Intelligence Tools Like ChatGPT Could Change Decision Making on the Farm,” https://www.dtnpf.com/…
Chris Clayton can be reached at [email protected].
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