WILLAGRI
The hopes of many governments and farmers rest on the progress of new technologies applied to agriculture. New tools – sensors, drones, satellites, robots, etc. – are powered by artificial intelligence. The latter is all the more valuable when it helps to reduce the use of environmentally harmful chemical inputs such as herbicides.
Deere and Co has just developed a spraying boom equipped with dozens of cameras and a graphics processor formatted to detect weeds, such as Palmer’s pigweed. Circulating in the fields, it sprays unwanted weeds without ever spilling over into the crops. The Canadian company Precision AI offers the same services, this time with drones piloted by artificial intelligence.
Deere and Precision AI aren’t the first to offer AI-based processes for targeting weeds and reducing chemical herbicide consumption.
AI has long been used to analyze large amounts of agricultural data, such as satellite imagery, weather data, and crop histories. It thus makes it possible to accurately identify areas infested with weeds. This identification allows farmers to spray only the affected plots and not all the fields.
Instead, Deere’s innovation is inspired by computer vision technologies, drones and agricultural robots that can detect weeds in real time. Deere and Precision AI offer a solution that combines targeting and spraying in the same movement.
59% reduction in herbicide consumption
These two technologies are particularly interesting in terms of environmental preservation. Deere’ s See and Spray method reduces herbicide consumption by 59%! The process has a future if farmers give up genetically modified plants to be more resistant to herbicides such as soybeans, corn or cotton. Farmers have no qualms about overusing chemical herbicides.
Farmers still need to be convinced to adopt such a revolutionary and, for the moment, expensive method. This should be the case if we take into account the collateral benefits of the process in terms of less harmful runoff, better protected biodiversity and reduced risk of human cancer.
Upstream, AI has predictive capabilities. It can warn of when, in which areas, and under what conditions weeds will thrive. This information is crucial for the robots who will then target and spray.
Finally, AI contributes to raising awareness and training farmers in new technologies. It provides them with personalized advice on weed management, their modulation according to crops and to integrate them into soil conservation practices such as crop rotation, the preservation of the organic balance of the soil taking into account factors such as the type of crop or environmental conditions or the preservation of biodiversity.