GlobalData says Artificial Intelligence will make farming more efficient and reduce the sector’s environmental impact
GlobalData has released report highlighting how Artificial Intelligence has the potential to ”supercharge” efficiency throughout the agribusiness value chain.
According to the analytics and data specialist, AI could support precision agriculture, automate labour-intensive tasks, verify the sustainability of supply chains, and even accelerate the gene editing of crops.
In the strategic intelligence report, titled ’Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture’, GlobalData revealed that the natural language capabilities of generative AI would improve knowledge sharing and skill acquisition across the sector.
AI farm management systems monitored and analysed crop yields and soil health before recommending the most efficient use of resources, it said, while computer vision could also enable autonomous farm robots, speeding up labour-intensive farming processes.
“Agriculture is facing numerous complex challenges, and pressure on the sector to produce food for a growing population has never been greater,” said Aoife McGurk, associate analyst, strategic intelligence at GlobalData.
”According to UN estimates, the global population will hit 9.7bn by 2050, and urbanisation is reducing the supply of arable land and rural workers necessary to feed this population.
“On top of this, anthropogenic climate change is making farming more costly and less reliable, with extreme weather events devastating harvests more frequently,” she noted.
”To overcome these challenges, the agriculture sector must embrace emerging technologies like AI to produce more food with fewer resources.”
Incorporating AI into agriculture would make farming more efficient and reduce the sector’s environmental impact, provided the sector can only overcome its slow tech adoption rate, GlobalData reported.
AI could improve supply chain operations, minimising friction and verifying sustainability. There was also the potential for AI to enhance crop gene editing and seed production by predicting the outcomes of specific genetic edits.
“The potential for AI to verify supply chain sustainability is particularly pertinent in the current climate, with the EU’s new deforestation law causing a headache for many large agribusinesses,” McGurk continued.
”Cargill is using AI to analyse satellite images and verify that its products’ supply chains have not involved deforestation at any stage. Many agricultural commodity providers could adopt this approach.”
The new report used GlobalData’s Company Filings Analytics tool to analyse sentiment towards AI across the sector.
Between Q3 2019 and Q2 2024, AI only received 979 mentions in agribusiness company filings. This was only 0.3 per cent of the 306,356 mentions of ESG, the most mentioned theme.
“Issues with scale and tight profit margins mean much of the farming sector faces a slow rate of tech adoption, especially with emerging technologies like AI,” McGurk added.
”Despite the vast array of potential applications in the sector, AI in agriculture is not receiving the attention it deserves.”
