Technologies for the big green revolution

As you may have guessed, when referring to green revolution, I am talking about agriculture. Being the oldest profession of all times, farming will always occupy a special place in our history. Thanks to our ancestors who discovered that wild grains are edible and started to collect one hundred fifty thousand years ago, today the food industry is one of the largest sectors of the global economy. Thanks to our Peruvian ancestors who started to domesticate cotton around five thousand four hundred years ago, today the fashion industry plays a significant role in the global economy as well. So, whether we are talking about discoveries made thousands of years ago, or more recent, each of them played a crucial role in our evolution.

Nowadays, according to a McKinsey report, food and agribusinesses form a five trillion global dollar industry and will not be stopping anytime soon. Why? The answer is simple – technology.

The new age of agriculture

Agriculture, as our ancestors knew it, is coming to an end as technology is bringing new ways of improving the processes. Today, machine learning is the concept that drives innovation in farming, also seen as green revolution. Over the past couple of years, agriculture techniques have exploded, allowing farmers to grow crops in controlled environments faster. Actually, it has been revealed that this technique is allowing a 20% faster growth rate with 91% less water. Even though it might seem easy, growing and harvesting crops in controlled environments such as indoor or vertical stacks, has its challenges, and it requires more work to be done, such as monitoring acidity, soil nutrients, and of course, watering time for each seed or plant. Without the technology that provides all this information, this method wouldn’t last too long.

Close encounter

The meeting between cognitive technologies and agriculture was an instant success. Farmers realized the tremendous help it had to offer and embraced it without any doubts.

• Image recognition

Agricultural drones have reshaped the farming process. Monitoring crops and seeding, or scanning plants for diseases, have improved the quality of the harvest and also eased the overall processes. The need for innovation and improvements in the farming sector will continue to have a strong impact and will drive the agricultural drone market to four thousand, two hundred and nine point two million dollars by 2022. I wonder how farming will look five years from now.

• Maximize return on crops and improve farming efficiency

Cognitive technology has found its place in the farming sector as well. With the valuable insights that these technologies have to offer such as marketplace trends, consumer behaviour and needs, farming is evolving towards perfection. With the help of machine learning and data, farmers can have a better understanding of how different seeds react to different environments. And in return, they could prevent certain crops from diseases, or even create hybrid seeds with a higher success rate.Artificial intelligence has unlimited powers, and we can consider ourselves lucky that we are witnessing to its foundation.

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