Artificial intelligence has been the talk of the town ever since ChatGPT was founded. While the technology is already being used in numerous areas and is already making processes more efficient, it is still unclear how AI can be used in other areas. One of these is agriculture.

While digitalisation has arrived in agriculture, artificial intelligence still needs to be trained to a large extent in order to be used efficiently in agriculture. The biggest difficulty here is that nature is often unpredictable. ‘From the point of view of AI specialists, there is nothing more brutal than nature,’ explains Philipp Schmid, Head of Research at the Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique (CSEM), in an interview with the ‘Bauern Zeitung’. According to Thomas Anken from the Digital Production research group at Agroscope, the problem often lies in the collection of data. AI is dependent on good data, but this is often in short supply in agriculture. ‘There are still a lot of gaps in the area of sensor systems, as many important parameters cannot yet be collected easily and cost-effectively.’ One example of this is the nitrate content in the soil.

Measuring biodiversity with a super drone

Another hurdle for AI in agriculture is the small areas of land. As Schmid explains, Switzerland is full of small farms with different farming zones and many special circumstances - poor conditions for affordable AI applications.

However, according to Schmid, farmers are generally not averse to new technologies or AI. The rapid spread of autonomous barn robots or drones also makes this clear. Just recently, a new drone that can measure biodiversity in forests made the headlines. According to a report in ‘Schweizer Bauer’, the drone was developed by a team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, ETH Zurich and the University of Pisa. Unlike conventional drones, the monitoring drone developed by the scientists does not perceive shrubs and branches as an obstacle, but can push them away or even glide through them and thus observe biodiversity.

The Flora-Incognita app offers another way of monitoring biodiversity. It makes it possible to identify plants quickly and easily. Using the app is child's play: users take a photo of the plant they want to find out more about with their smartphone camera, upload it to the app and then receive information about the plant. This information is provided by botanists.

When laypeople measure biodiversity

The best thing is that biodiversity is monitored entirely by means of citizen science. Each individual user plant photo, together with its location and time, contributes to a large data set that ultimately provides information on biodiversity in the individual areas.

These are just a few examples. One thing is clear: AI offers many opportunities for agriculture. The new technologies can not only improve efficiency, productivity and sustainability, but also increase animal welfare and reduce the physical strain and time commitment of farmers.

Nevertheless, AI also harbours certain risks. For example, cybercrime and data misuse are always an issue. According to Anken, it is therefore important to take the necessary precautions to prevent such misuse.