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In present world, development is the demand of every developing country and developed country wants to maintain their standard. We have living example that in developed nation only a bit of population is involved in agriculture unlike in developing country where more than half of the population of the nation rely in agriculture. So, if people of developing country like Nepal continue to rely on traditional techniques i.e. mainly human labor, there is high chance that we will not only fail in development but also in agriculture which will soon result in food scarcity. Land is always a constant resource we have and agriculture land is always decreasing because the population of the world is increasing with Total Fertility Rate (TFR) or average birth per women over their life time of 2.4 and where will the earth accommodate the additional 2.3 billion population of 2050? The answer is, in the agricultural land of today and to solve all the problem, application of artificial intelligence in agriculture is the brilliant way. How a bit of population in United State can made such a huge production? Because United State is the largest consumption of artificial intelligence in world. According to oxford English dictionary artificial intelligence is defined as “The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.” The common example of artificial intelligence we applied on daily life are smart phone, drones, Google, facebook, E-mail, Instagram, etc. Some major ways that AI is contributing to the agriculture industry are robotics, Image -based Insights for Crop/Soil Health, Flying Drones, Yield Boosting Algorithm, Automation techniques in irrigation etc. The area in agriculture where artificial intelligence can be applied are: 1)Selection of crop and predicting weather: Automatic Weather Station can be installed and used for obtaining weather related data of a place and to select crops for that area. Long term planning on crop and disease forecasting can be done so that plant protection measure can be applied timely. 2)Sowing: Algorithm flow chart and sensor can be used in isolating the diseased seed and sowing to the precise depth. 3) Field Management: Huge amount of human labor can be saved followed by precise management by the use of artificial intelligence. Field moisture determination followed by supplement of only required volume of water can be maintained. Using high-definition images from airborne systems (drone or copters), real-time estimates can be made during cultivation period by creating a field map and identifying areas where crops require water, fertilizer or pesticides. This helps in resource optimization to a large extent. 4) Plant protection: Present situation is, we would loss food worth $ 450 billion without application of plant protection measures and in future we may have to apply lethal dose as insects and fungi are gaining resistance. So use of robots and drones can be best solution as there is high risk in application of such pesticide and entering such field. Disease forecasting can be use to prevent from the upcoming epidemics. Similarly, innovation like Blue River Technology is reducing herbicide use, which uses the principle of “see and spray”. The system can find and spray only where the weeds are. 5) Harvesting: Images of different crops under white/UV-A light are captured to determine how ripe the green fruits are. Farmers can create different levels of readiness based on the crop category and add them into separate stacks before sending them to the market. 6) Precision farming: Precise Farming uses AI to generate accurate techniques that help provide guidance and understanding about field management and optimal harvesting. These processes make farming more efficient and accurate, and can even help predict ROI on specific crops based on their costs and margin within the market. While AI won’t eliminate the jobs of human farmers, it will surely improve their processes and provide them with more efficient ways to produce, harvest and sell essential crops. Though the literature is always optimistic towards the use of artificial intelligence which only focus the advantages but artificial intelligence is like the availability of the fungicide in the Irish potato famine which would have save million of life. Lack of familiarity and illiteracy may be the challenge with acceptance continuous application may familiarized farmer and overcome this challenge.
Great work