Artificial intelligence beginning to influence Illinois agriculture

(The Center Square) – Artificial intelligence is making its mark on many industries, and now appears to be impacting Illinois agriculture.

An AI farms project at the University of Illinois has trained a language model to answer agricultural crop questions. School officials said the Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability Institute will serve as a nexus for multidisciplinary research teams that advance foundational AI and use the advances to address important challenges facing world agriculture.

A Chicago-based nonprofit is pioneering AI Agtech for smallholder, subsistence farmers in some of the poorest parts of the world. Opportunity International launched Ulangizi, which means “advice” in English, for farmers in Malawi who have questions about best practices for their crops or farm animals.

Neatleaf has invented a fully autonomous robotic platform called the Spyder, which scans crops in the greenhouse and generates data points on plant health and growth. This data is analyzed and turned into actionable insights for the cultivation team to assess, monitor, and remedy.

"Farmers can only make educated guesses on the health of their crops based on what the human eye can see, but often, when problems arise, it's too late to save the crop,” said Neatleaf founder Elmar Mair. “Our technology uses AI to spot potential problems long before they reach a critical stage, allowing farmers to make necessary adjustments to improve plant health."

The Spyder is being used in the cultivation of marijuana, but Mair hopes to expand uses of the technology outside of the greenhouse, such as a vineyard.

AI is being used for pest control. For example, Trapview has developed a device that traps pests and identifies them. The device attracts pests, which are photographed by a camera. AI then identified over 60 pest species which can damage crops.

Madhu Khanna, professor of Environmental Economics at the University Illinois, said it may take some time for farmers to fully trust AI technology.

“Handing over the charge for how to manage a farm to a robot is going to take some level of adaptation,” Khanna said at the 100th annual U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Outlook Forum last March. “Many of us would be very reluctant to let a robot make investment decisions over our life savings instead of having a financial adviser and that’s the kind of thing you can imagine for a farmer would be very similar.”