PFIA 2024
Using AI to make agriculture more sustainable
Food is important. All of us rely on it, every day, to survive. At the same time, the methods that have been used to grow our food over the last 80 years raise concerns about long-term sustainability. Modern agriculture relies heavily on chemical herbicides and pesticides which have side-effects that cause ecological damage, and intensive agricultural practices have degraded soils and led to costly erosion. More sustainable agriculture is urgently needed, and artificial intelligence (AI) can help achieve it.
In this talk, I will look at ways that AI can help to make our food supply more sustainable. All the examples will be based on work at the University of Lincoln, some that I have been involved in, and some that is the work of my colleagues. Broadly speaking this work falls into three categories: modifying existing practices by making use of AI; identifying new practices that are only feasible because of AI; and efforts to increase the pipeline of AI practitioners who are engaged in making agriculture sustainable.