[At] the North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative (N.C. PSI) at NC State, data is considered an essential part of farm equipment. It’s crucial to the future of farming, which must grow more food for a rapidly increasing population, use less farmland to grow that food and navigate the challenges of climate change and new crop diseases and pests.
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Researchers believe “precision agriculture” powered by artificial intelligence (AI) can help.
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But, just as a farmer must first plant seeds, researchers need to train their AI software before computers crunch data and produce results.
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To understand precision agriculture, think about how a self-driving car works. Technicians must train computers to understand and recognize everything a car “sees,” from crosswalks and stoplights to pedestrians and even other cars.
It’s the same with precision agriculture. The computer must be taught what a weed is, what a crop is, what different types of soils and soil conditions look like, which insects are good or bad for plants and so on.
