Artificial intelligence helps farmers spot diseased corn and soybean faster.

If farmers want to know how healthy crops are, perhaps they shouldn't trust their eyes. Matt Free -- a manager at Evergreen FS, an agriculture company -- learned that lesson this year. His team provides crop protection services such as fertilizers and herbicides to farmers across Illinois. After a year-long test of a variety of new technologies, Evergreen FS found artificial intelligence could identify trouble, such as fungus growth and water shortages, in corn and soybean crops weeks before the naked eye would ever realize it. The tech, which comes from startup Ceres Imaging, offers farmers an AI analysis of photos taken from planes flying several thousand feet above fields. Previously, the technology was generally limited to orchards and vineyards.