The Role AI & Data Analytics Can Play In Tackling Farmers' Distress

While AI and data analytics has seen rapid adoption in agriculture, a bulk of these have been tangential and are relegated to supply chain management and not necessarily in-field farming techniques. This is because the age-old practice of agriculture has typically been governed by intuition rather than cold hard facts, but this is beginning to change. Farmers are increasingly offered the opportunity to employ intelligent farming practices with the help of these emerging technologies. These digital transformations are not only improving farm management but also other measures to enhance profitability and stability on the field. For instance, while IBM has been computing actionable agronomic insights for farmers including pest-risk forecast and critical weather-related information, Microsoft has also enabled unique data-enabled farming techniques using Azure FarmBeats.