Climate-Resilient Farming: At Clarah.co, we are fascinated by the new frontiers of technology, and agriculture is no different. As climate change presents increasing difficulties to agriculture, AI is becoming an invaluable aid to farmers in planting climate-resistant seeds and providing global food security in every corner of the world.
The Climate Challenge for Farmers
The head of Shepherd’s Grain, a flour company based in Idaho, Jeremy Bunch, is well aware of the dangers of climate change.
More business comes from developing new ways to mitigate the impacts of another potential risk: “Weather and climate are likely the No. 1 risk we have to our business,” he says.
Among a new wave of U.S. farmers facing relentless wet weather is the 700 or so that make up Shepherd’s Grain.
They supply 51 milling plants in the western U.S. and into Canada, selling about 600,000 weight of wheat a year, said Mike Robinson, president of the farmers’ cooperative, based in Portland, Oregon.
Shepherds Grain sources wheat from farms across the U.S. Pacific Northwest, where brittle fall weather is amplified by increasingly erratic year-to-year weather patterns. Bunch said he has demanded several contingency plans to protect his business.
In order to enhance the Fortify strategies, Shepherd’s Grain has recently partnered with ClimateAi, an AI software platform that uses an arsenal of cutting-edge techniques to accurately, quickly and cheaply predict the recent past of the weather.
Using historical data as well as current satellite images and temperature and rainfall readings, this high-powered tool also draws on additional future projections. Farmers will receive weather forecasts specific to their location, as close as one hour and as far out in time as 6 months.
This level of accuracy allows the app to recommend the best times to plant and harvest crops and estimate yields. With the app, 40-plus farmers that work with Shepherd’s Grain have effectively moved almost entirely to ClimateAi to make crop management decisions — especially for wheat, which is the main crop in the region — since adopting the platform last year.
“Using ClimateAi to predict the future, our growers are able to understand what fields to plant into and when to get things into the ground – and use AI to decide which crops to plant. The platform is precious in predicting flowering and seed production stages.
Accelerating Climate-Resilient Seeds
One of the major barriers to the seed industry are the time and cost of getting climate-resilient seeds to market, according to Himanshu Gupta, CEO of ClimateAi.
However, he says some seed companies approach warming trends like this: “By the time we develop new varieties, the climate has already moved. For these companies, ClimateAi helps by analyzing how test seeds grow in certain regions, meaning we identify regions that are most suitable for seed cultivation.
A study published in Nature detailed the catastrophic impacts of widespread crop losses at the same time on a global scale, which we can expect from climate change.
The study, co-authored by climate scientist Kai Kornhuber from Columbia University, has implications for global food security as the world prepares to feed 10bn people by 2050, he said.
How AI Is Playing a Part in Crop Breeding
In Arusha, Tanzania, a project called Artemis is being led by David Guerena, an agricultural scientist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture. Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Artemis helps to breed plant varieties with greater resilience to climate change using AI.
Especially in a fast-changing climate, traditional phenotyping — observing the new crop varieties with human eyes — can take up to around 10 years, a time frame that is no longer useful. As Guerena puts it, “Human evaluation is too inconsistent and imprecise for making the fine but critical choices of selecting plants.
Our latest dive into the future with CTO Stephan Brus reads like something from the movie BladeRunner… it sheds some light on what the future might look like… right now growers in the Artemis project use a simple smartphone app to take pictures of crops with which AI performs clinical analysis, down to bullseyeing microscopic pests digging tunnels in the plants.
“Computers can count every flower or pod every day, fatigue-free, or the blossom count which is related to yield,” he says. Such improved gathering of data means that breeding cycles could be shortened to just a couple of years following the docking of the new Vison technology.
Agri-Tech Genetic Breakthrough
Agri-tech company, Avalo from North Carolina, is using AI in decoding genetic data to breed crops that are more resilient and resistant to climate. “Naturally, the first thing we do is start with genomes of the crops and basically figure out what traits are important,” explained Avalo COO Rebecca White.
Their machine-learning algorithm takes images of these genetic variations and determines anything from flavour to pesticide resistance. The company’s tech enabled a broccoli variety that can be grown in a greenhouse and ready for harvest in 37 days rather than the usual 45-60 days. The result is a productivity increase that shortens the growth cycle and lowers the carbon footprint.
Through the use of this type of CRISPR, Avalo is also editing links, to make rice generate frost resistance and make potatoes more drought-resistant with gene engineering, producing new ranges for a small fraction of the amount of time and cost.
The Road Ahead
Even though the possibilities for AI are infinite in agriculture, there are some challenges ahead as stated by Kate E Jones, a professor of ecology and biodiversity at University College London.
“AI has the potential to be an opportunity to improve food security and needs to be coordinated with data quality and technological accessibility matters”, she adds.
AI should complement a broader agroecological vision that ensures sustainable and resilient agriculture.
As usual, this space will serve as a hub for keeping up with and reporting on those developments, and, as always, provide insights into how technology can play in shaping a world that works for all.
