AI and robots can help the world grow more food—even if they’re still not quite as good as a human farmer
The world population is still growing every year. The amount of farmland is not. That means farmers will need to find ways to use their limited land more efficiently. AI could help, according to agriculture executives.
“Humanity does not have enough food to put on the table for everybody,” Feroz Sheikh, chief information and digital officer of the Syngenta Group, said at the Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore conference last week. “By 2050, we will need 600 million hectares of additional land. That is almost four times the agricultural land in Europe.”
Syngenta has built a network of Modern Agriculture Platform, or MAP centers, in China to help solve this problem. The centers use digital agricultural systems—technology like drones, robots, and AI—to help local growers maximize their farmland’s potential. “Simple advice can really help improve the yield for these farmers,” Sheikh explained.
Malaysia-based Agroz Group is also leveraging AI to help farmers. The company created “Copilot for Farmers” by training an AI model on their standard operating procedures. Junior growers can take a picture of a plant they are growing, and Agroz Copilot will identify whether it’s healthy or not. Founder and CEO Gerard Lim described it as “a tool that puts the power of most senior and experienced growers in the palm of your hands.”
Additionally, Lim noted that he sees robotics as the next phase for the Agroz Group after agentic AI is perfected. “Humanoid robots will work in our indoor farms and in our greenhouses probably by next year,” he predicted
Japanese firm AGRIST is already using robots to improve harvesting efficiency on farms.
Today’s agricultural robots still aren’t as efficient at harvesting fruits and vegetables as humans. Yet farmers “don’t need a perfect robot,” explained Junichi Saito, AGRIST founder and CEO. And AGRIST’s robots have the advantage of being cheap, costing around $10,000, as well as being able to work 24 hours without sleep or food.
Robots are needed “for solving the issue of shortage of labor” in farming, Saito said. His vision is for “AI and the robot and human being [to] collaborate with each other to make the world happier.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com