Utilizing technology is not a new practice in the agriculture and food and beverage sectors. We've already seen intelligent robots that can weed and pick apples, biometrics that can offer real-time animal information, and sophisticated equipment that can pump milk from cows with minimal human intervention. However, as technology improves, more clever technologies have appeared to help farmers increase their yield and speed up crop production. AI in the farming industry encourages farmers to increase their output while minimizing negative environmental consequences. The agriculture industry completely and publicly incorporated AI in its operations to change the overall result. Technology is transforming the way we grow our food, resulting in a 20% reduction in agricultural field emissions.

Some sort of a positive step taken in this way is the agreement that Germany and India signed on Artificial Intelligence, which chalks out the numerous ways it could be deployed in the farming industry. This agreement was signed in the light of India being the world's largest producer of food grains. But with the advent of negatively changing environment, the reality is somewhat different to what was imagined. India signed an agreement to reduce the carbon footprint that comes along with the agricultural sector. Farming is considered to be one of the biggest carbon footprinting jobs, hence the agreement. With the yearly instance of stubble burning, tons of pollution gets released in the air and the consequences are to be faced by Delhi in the months of October and November.

What if there was no such thing as "real"? What if food could be made from thin air? What if electronics could last forever? These are some of the questions being tackled by Europe's top tech innovators identified by our team here at Sifted, in association with the co-working space Second Home and their Breakthrough event this month. This is not your ordinary innovator list. You may not have heard of these startups.

In a few years, robotic farming equipment will be able to plow and prepare soil while human farmers sleep. That is what Hokkaido University professor Noboru Noguchi and his team are aiming for as the nation's farmers age, with no successors in place. The improved use of robotics in agriculture will not only reduce manual labor but will enable aging farmers to continue working and focus their time and energy on areas that require their knowledge and experience. The related technology has been advancing in recent years. Machinery that allows a driver to sit back while it plows the field in straight lines is already on the market.

Farming is the oldest industry out there, but it's one that's far from being perfect. Some parts of the world suffer from major cases of over-farming, whereas other places can't get enough. It's tricky trying to get the right balance between supply and demand when it comes to food, but with thanks to machine learning techniques, we may just be one step closer to achieving this. The world's population is steadily increasing, and in order to continue to feed everyone, farming techniques need to become more efficient and farmers smarter. One new technique that has been developed to tackle this problem is vertical farming.