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Fields of Intelligence - How AI Is Transforming the Future of Farming

Agriculture and farming is at the forefront of the fight against food poverty and is helping to drive development across the globe. The emergence of AI is helping to beckon forth a new age of agriculture in which farmers are able to optimise their crop yields, ensure their farming methods are the most efficient they can be, and detect diseases before they wipe out entire fields worth of crops. For livestock farmers, AI-powered systems have been vital in ensuring that their animals are kept disease-free in real time, allowing for rapid response when an issue is flagged up. AI is empowering farmers from across the globe to continue their vital work and provide food and security for billions of people across the globe. AI doesn’t replace farmers, it fuels them.


Perhaps the most innovative and widespread use of AI in farming has been the adoption of Ai tools to identify crop diseases before they’re visible, giving farmers a head start against diseases that threaten their entire livelihood and tens of thousands of crops. In the fight to ensure that farmers remain on top of diseases and are optimising their crop yields, PlantVillage has proven to be a valuable tool for millions of farmers in some of the harshest conditions on earth. PlantVillage is an app that ‘helps farmers with information that helps them make better decisions in their fields. It equips farmer's smartphones with the ability to identify plant pests’ (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2024). PlantVillage has proven to be hugely useful in areas such as Kenya, in which it ‘allows the farmers to monitor biomass on a plot of land, giving small-scale farmers insight into how their crops are developing and assisting in deciding the best course of action for the best outcome in terms of yield’ (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2024). The impact of PlantVillage, and its ability to enhance the information gathering and optimisation surrounding farms and crop yields is widespread. PlantVillage is used in ‘more than 60 countries and 35 languages’ (PennState Eberly College of Science, 2025), marking a truly global wave of technology enhancing farmers from across the world by equipping them with the tools necessary to create sustainable, efficient farms that are more resilient to disease and crop damage. 


The fusion of AI and established technologies such as drones has also been a perhaps unlikely source of efficiency in the battle to ensure farms remain optimised and resilient against crop damage and disease. Companies such as Sentera are combining the two technologies to allow farmers to gain insights into their farms that help their optimisation greatly, by ‘harnessing the power of high-resolution imagery, AI, advanced data science, and state-of-the-art hardware’ Sentera provides farmers with ‘precise, plant-level insights’ which in turn ‘arrive just in time to inform crucial on-farm decisions, significantly boosting both efficiency and profitability’. The use of technology, such as AI-processed high-resolution aerial data, has proven invaluable to thousands of farms. ‘Recent studies have suggested that AI-based unmanned aerial vehicle systems can detect crop diseases with a mean accuracy of over 90%’  (Agrawal & Arafat, 2024, p.664), highlighting the unbelievable accuracy of such tech and the importance of this technology to the farmers that use it. Such technology is leading the way in allowing farmers to become more sustainable and profitable, showing us that technology can work hand in hand with agriculture to push forward to a brighter future.


In continents such as Africa and Asia, such harsh heat and lack of consistent rainfall mean that ensuring every last drop of water used in irrigation and farming in general is used beneficially is absolutely key to sustainable farming practices. Without water, farms will not be able to survive, with the direct consequences of this being totally catastrophic. The need for efficient and sustainable irrigation practices will only grow across the globe as the effects of climate change are felt in increasing intensity. AI tools are once again at the forefront of the battle to ensure that every drop counts. This can be seen in Burkina Faso where ‘farmers are using AI to get better forecasts about rain, linked to irrigation recommendations’ (Dixon, 2024, p.206) with such valuable insights meaning that they have been able to reduce ‘water use by 30% and are seeing higher yields’ (Dixon, 2024, p.206-207). This is only the beginning, with AI irrigation systems also being piloted in places such as ‘Kenya, Mali and Ethiopia’ (Dixon, 2024, p.207), in the harshest of conditions farmers are turning to AI to ensure their irrigation is efficient and optimised and AI is in turn unlocking hugely valuable insights. In addition to this, companies such as Reinke and CropX are allowing for greater farm management insights, allowing for more efficient irrigation tactics, and generally allowing farmers to begin optimising all of their farming operations. CropX equips farmers with the ability to ensure efficient irrigation with ‘irrigation prescription constantly adapts to the changing conditions of the soil and weather, based on the user’s irrigation type, soil type and texture, crop type and variety, precise weather information and more’ (Reinke & CropX). It has had a huge impact on farming with CropX being ‘deployed on over 10,000 fields, 50 countries, across all arable continents, on over 80 crop types’ (Reinke & CropX). The future of agriculture is here, and farms are only going to get more sustainable and efficient as such technology grows and becomes more widespread. 


For livestock farmers, disease is one of the biggest threats to their livelihood and their ability to provide food. Disease outbreaks have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of animals and have been the cause of some of the most famous national crises in history. Farmers are increasingly turning towards AI tools to combat the spread of disease and detect it before its able to enact devastating consequences. Such systems are already finding themselves adopted by farmers across the globe as ‘AI tools like computer vision and data analytics help farmers closely monitor animal health, behavior, and growth. This helps improve animal welfare and makes farming more efficient’ (Sajid, 2024). One such algorithm is YOLOv8  which helps to ‘analyze feeding times and rest periods to detect abnormal behaviors that might signal stress or discomfort’ (Sajid, 2024), these behavioural changes can be an indicator that an animal has a disease or illness, and means that farmers can act quickly to ensure that the disease does not spread, or find out what the root of the issue is. In addition to this, technologies such as Moocall, which allow farmers to ‘Receive SMS alerts notifying’ (Keogh & Skelly) them when their ‘cow is about to calf’ (Keogh & Skelly) means that farmers are able to be far more efficient in general, and removes a great deal of uncertainty to livestock farming. 


From ancient tools to satellite-guided tractors, farming has always evolved but never this fast, and never with this much potential. AI isn’t a threat to the farmer’s wisdom; it’s a multiplier. In every field, every herd, every harvest, it’s helping build a more resilient, intelligent food system not just for the few, but for the future.



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