cows

AI and it’s influence on farming

  • On : January 30, 2019

The time has passed whereby everyone does everything the traditional way. We are now living in a society which is continuously evolving and heavily dependant upon technology. This reliance on technology has led to the adoption of artificial intelligence in just about every aspect of life. Now we are seeing AI play its role in farming. This might come as a shock to many as the farming industry is typically made up of hard workers who don’t shy away from tough work. Those farms that have adopted the technology are generally very large manufacturing farms which are producing vast amounts of produce, but now we are starting to see smaller farms adopt AI technology to improve efficiency.

These smaller farms are now adopting technology that allows them to milk cows using robotic machines. In other areas of America, robots will soon be able to roam the farm’s vegetable crops to spot disease and pluck weeds.

For giant farms, it’s all about increasing yields and cutting costs, whilst this is also important for smaller farms but the major advantage is that technology eliminates a lot of tedious labour jobs. This technology can be used to persuade the younger generation who are defiantly not a big fan of these tedious labour jobs to stay put on family farms rather than leave the farm for other jobs.

Robotic milkers have now been on the market for years but like all technology, it has been continuously improving and now requires much less human assistance than ever before. These machines are currently costing about $200,000 each but without them, you would have up to 5 workers whereas with the machine you only need one worker to oversee the operations.

With changing immigration policies, shortage of workers and raising wages farm owners are being left with very little choice but to adopt the technology into their day to day operations.

The big question is how many farms will be willing to trust such technology to perform tasks that they have been doing for generations. In my opinion, many of the smaller farms will be heavily resistant towards change due to the fact that they are very much set in their ways and would find the whole process very difficult to transition to a technology reliant farm. It will be interesting to see how many farms in the future choose to adopt AI technology.