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Revolutionizing agriculture with AI: Increasing sustainability and improving farming practices
The complex nature of agriculture requires the mastery of many different disciplines.
Farmers need to be experts in understanding soil composition, weather patterns, crop diseases, and how to apply accurate crop-specific techniques while minimizing the environmental footprint.
In short, to survive in today’s agricultural landscape, farmers need to overcome many challenges ahead of them. Climate change is affecting yields; pests alone destroy up to 40% of crops each year.1 Additionally, inflation and rising input costs and labour shortages are just a few examples of the challenges in today’s agriculture industry.
Farmers are becoming more open to technology solutions as they witness the tangible benefits that can help them make informed choices and take precise action to tackle the challenges they’re facing today. Also, new regulations and technologies are helping to lower the industry's negative environmental impact and create a more sustainable and resilient food system to meet the growing global food demand.
However, data shows that globally, only 2% of farms are digitalized, and those are the larger, enterprise farms. The other 98% are small and medium-sized farms. These farms produce 60% of the global food output, and they need assistance and support from the wider agricultural ecosystem to embrace data-driven, informed practices. Although many agtech solutions are now available, the technology is not always simple and intuitive enough to reach all farmers.
Recognizing this gap, agtech company AGRIVI has leveraged Generative Artificial intelligence (AI) technology and developed AGRIVI Ed. This is an agronomic AI advisor designed to democratize access to technology for smallholder and medium-sized farms, revolutionizing how farmers access knowledge and make decisions.
Generative AI as a potential to accelerate digitalization in agriculture
AI is used in the agriculture industry as a vital driver of automation to empower new generations of machinery, smart sprayers and a wide range of hardware products. It is also a driver of actionable insights, predictions and recommendations in software products. In 2023, a new breakthrough, Generative AI, made the headlines. Its ability to take up the final stretch of presenting and communicating information to end users in a simple and human-like personalized conversation has shown to be a remarkable tool in the agriculture industry.
“With our AI Advisory solution, we have truly embraced the biggest opportunity of Generative AI – to bridge the gap between data driven solutions and farmers. AI removes the need for farmers to analyze data themselves, and allows them to ask questions and receive the answers in their native language,” says Matija Zulj, Founder and CEO at AGRIVI.
“We saw a huge opportunity to create a solution that will deliver meaningful knowledge and advice to those farmers through the platforms they already use”.
AGRIVI Ed acts as an expert agronomic advisor available to farmers 24/7 in over 50 languages. One of its key features is that it is accessible through messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Viber to be intuitive and seamless for farmers to use, regardless of their technological knowledge.
As an agronomic advisor, AGRIVI Ed can provide expert advice to farmers on optimal seed selection, recommending effective crop protection products for specific pests or diseases, and providing insights on fertilizers and regenerative practices. Furthermore, Ed can offer advice on crop insurance, financing options, and techniques to achieve the best crop quality.
In addition to assisting individual farmers, AGRIVI recognizes the importance of collaboration within the agricultural value chain. To facilitate this, AGRIVI made Ed unique to the market. Namely, Ed is available to all agriculture-related companies through AGRIVI’s fully managed platform – AGRIVI Engage, which allows organizations to have their own customized version of Ed. Companies can tailor Ed’s advice to align with specific objectives and provide valuable support to farmers within their ecosystem.
Tackling challenges in agrifood value chain
Agrifood companies can now easily launch their AI-driven agronomy advisor in a couple of weeks with the support of AGRIVI Engage platform which does not require any internal AI know-how from agri-food companies. This collaboration allows companies to empower all farms in their eco-systems with immediate access to knowledge and advice through channels they already use.
So, companies that deliver inputs to farmers, or food companies that source produce from them, and those in the public sector (such as cities and municipalities) can create their personalized AI advisor and deliver it to the farmers in their markets.
For input companies, this solution is enabling them to reach more farms on the market and boost the efforts of their agronomy teams on the field while delivering specialized, trusted, and compliant advice to farms.
On the other hand, food, beverage, and retail companies can deliver AI advisors to farms in their agricultural supply chain to empower their sustainability, regenerative, and other programs by upskilling and educating farmers, as well as securing simple in-chat data collection for compliance and sustainability purposes.
Governments, regions, and municipalities can bring their Local AI advisor to support farms in navigating through subsidies, and administration and securing the inclusion of farmers' voices in the policymaking.
“Our AI solution is empowering collaboration by bringing tangible business benefits to the companies and meaningful support to farmers. We strongly believe that it has a huge impact in transforming all segments of agricultural production and all sizes of farms,” adds Zulj.
New, sustainable ways of food production are needed as our current food ecosystem is broken due to climate change, inefficient supply chains, and unsafe food. With the global population projected to reach 10 billion by 2050, urgent changes are needed to ensure a future with healthy, nutritious, and climate-friendly food while securing livelihoods for farmers worldwide.3
This personalized AI Advisory solution allows companies and organizations to offer farmers with continuous access to information, knowledge, and advice. It fosters active collaboration and upskilling farmers toward digital transformation, while helping companies expand market presence, engage with customers and drive decarbonization within their supply chains.
This collaborative approach enables companies to accelerate the adoption of technology and drive positive change globally. Transformation of the agriculture industry is crucial to ensure the industry is resilient and sustainable enough to feed the growing population. Thus, making an impact in agriculture means making an impact on every single one of us eating the food every day.
References
1. National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Researchers Helping Protect Crops From Pests.
2. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. What do we really know about the number and distribution of farms and family farms in the world?
3. European Commission. Competence Centre on Foresight.
