Tackling starvation in Africa with Artificial Intelligent in Agriculture: My take!
A commercial Farmer preparing his Drone for crop Analysis
Programmed Drone and a heavy Harvester
Before going into this research work fully, here is a quote
There is an old saying in Africa ; When starvation is removed from abject poverty. Poverty is done!.........Nigerian adage
Majority of all third world countries have food crisis amongst other things, but feeding is the utmost problem the masses are facing. By that it means the millions of poor lives living way above the poverty line. A starved population is malnourished and is defunct of thinking and performing productively.
Agriculture is the trade that accompanied the evolution of humanity from pre-historic times to modern days and fulfilled superbly one of its most basic task: food supply. Today this still remains its core mission, but it’s integrated in a more complex than ever mechanism driven by multiple sociological, economic and environmental changes.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENT IN AGRICULTURE
Artificial intelligent is a major tool to drive the war against poverty (Food deficiencies) in developing Nations. The era of mechanized farming is evolving thanks to amazing innovations and also, Blockchain Technologies made things easier in the process executions of projects like vertical farming and fully mechanized and automated farming.
A modern fact is that, it is very possible for machines to learn to solve any problem on earth relating to the physical interaction of all things within a defined or contained environment Hypothetically...........by using machine learning plus artificial intelligence. Let me quickly digress to what AI is:
Artificial intelligence in this scenario is one where a machine can read its environment, and through a certain capacity of flexible rationality, take action to solve a specified task related to that environment. Machine learning is when this same machine, according to a specified set of algorithms and protocols, improves in its ability to address problems and goals related to the environment as the statistical nature of the data it receives increases. Put more plainly, as the system receives an increasing amount of similar sets of data that can be categorized into specified protocols, its ability to rationalize increases, allowing it to better predict on a range of crop production.
No farmer needs to weed the soil,cultivate the soil,apply fertilizer after planting seeds,prune the crops manually anymore before achieving optimum crop yield as all is controlled artificially by super computers in the case of vertical farming technology. Since all is done in a controlled environments,time and space is maximize and so is productivity. Farming process from planting to harvesting is done on super large scales with limited resources which can produce food for the bulk part of a population.
AFRICAN CHALLENGES
- Highly Capital intensive
- Skilled personnel are required for support.
- Multiple training needed for farmers.
- Lack of Government support.
Some of these challenges are mild because with adequate management and funding channeled into any agricultural Field,most of the challenges are solved.
Conclusion
The Blockchain has made things easy pretty much, there's no need banking on the Government anymore. Individuals can come together to fund an AI powered farm to end food scarcity, its has already began!
Ways Agriculture benefits from AI