Is AI About To Revolutionise Agritech?

• Published date: 09 May 2023
• Subject Matter: Intellectual Property, Patent
• Law Firm: Potter Clarkson
• Author: Charlotte Crowhurst, Lars Karn'e, Sara Holland, Camilla Ki'rboe, Timothy Powell, Graeme McCallum, Anna Johnson Aspberg, Benjamin Bell and Robert Cogger-Ward

Farming is one of the world's most important industries. Arguably as the food crisis worsens, it will continue to become even more important. As it does, farmers will need help to increase crops yield and livestock growth. A large part of this help will come from technology and, more specifically, from artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

To put just how important AI and ML are to farming into context, BI Intelligence Research estimates global spending on smart, connected agricultural technologies as a whole will triple in revenue by 2025, reaching $15.3 billion.

Meanwhile, spending on AI alone in the agriculture sector is predicted to rise from $1bn in 2020 to $4bn in 2026 according to Markets&Markets. During the same period IoT (Internet of Things)-enabled agricultural (IoTAg) monitoring will be, PwC predicts, agriculture's fastest-growing technology with the potential to reach $4.5bn of global spend by 2025.

The reason agriculture is such fertile ground for AI and ML is that farms cover such a vast and differing surface area that it is very difficult to keep up with what is happening across what could be hundreds or even thousands of acres.

Those responsible for keeping agricultural land in top healthy and productive order need to know how weather, seasonal sunlight, animals, birds and insects will impact them at any point during their crop or livestock's annual cycle.

They also need to know how to generate the optimum return from their fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, and planting irrigation cycles. Even the smallest adjustment can have a major effect on output.

These conundrums are perfect for AI and ML.

Algorithms can analyse huge amounts of data with complete accuracy, extrapolating the answers required to give famers, co-operatives, agricultural development agencies and even national governments the direction they need to improve agricultural yields and quality.

In this special report we will look at the ways AI and ML are helping the agricultural sector and, given the vital role innovation will play in enabling technology to do even more for farmers, how best to protect the new ideas that will inevitably shape agritech over the next decade.

HOW IS AI IMPROVING AGRICULTURE?

AI has already proved that the output from its real-time analysis of vast amounts of data from an equally vast breadth of sources and sensors can increase agricultural efficiencies, improve crop yields, and reduce food production costs.

Given the United...