The Effectiveness of Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture Research Paper

Table of Contents

Influenced by several stages of the industrial revolution, the contemporary world is particularly reliant on information technologies and artificial intelligence manifested through automated and computerized processes. Different sectors of the economy rely on artificial intelligence to varying extents. Agriculture is one of the critical economic sectors, the sustainable and stable development of which implies the world economy’s longevity and food security for the population globally (Bondre & Mahagaonkar, 2019; Patrício & Rieder, 2018). Moreover, artificial intelligence allows for conducting precision crop growing, planning for production, finding solutions for mitigating risk factors for harvesting, as well as finding alternative methods for achieving higher efficiency, productivity, and quality (Ruiz-Real et al., 2020). With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), big data are generated rapidly, which allows for analyzing the indicators essential for monitoring the food production processes (Misra et al., 2020). Thus, the use of artificial intelligence in the agricultural sector of the economy is essential, which validates the need for researching this sphere in-depth.

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While the necessity of technologization of agriculture is evident, the effectiveness of using artificial intelligence in this field requires clarification. Indeed, agriculture encounters a series of obstacles to efficient and qualitative production, including “disease and pest infestation, improper soil treatment, inadequate drainage and irrigation,” and others (Eli-Chukwu, 2019, p. 4377). Thus, given the multitude and diversity of challenges, it is essential to identify whether artificial intelligence is capable of coping with the constraining factors impeding the productivity and efficiency of agriculture.

Thus, the research question of the proposed study is as follows: how effective is the application of artificial intelligence to agriculture in terms of removing inefficiency and the lack of productivity? To answer this research question, the study will aim at conducting a qualitative inquiry to collect and analyze data from primary sources. Overall, it is anticipated that the study will provide scholars and specialists in the agricultural sphere with relevant and valuable evidence on the problematic areas of artificial intelligence’s implementation. In addition, the study will generate possible recommendations on how to improve the use of information technologies to benefit sustainable food production.

Background and Significance

Much research has been conducted to identify the relevance of artificial intelligence for the needs of the agricultural sphere and validate the benefits it yields. The question about the effectiveness of artificial intelligence’s usefulness for the agricultural sector stems from the debate about the relevance of implementing technologies in this sphere. On the one hand, with the expansion of information technologies and innovative solutions in other spheres, the use of such technologies as drones, computer imaging, big data analysis, and others is anticipated to minimize the hazards impacting agriculture.

Several studies address the positive outcomes of technological implementation on the background of environmentally-caused challenges the society faces today. In particular, according to Özkan and Dilay (2018), “changes and uncertainties in weather conditions, yields, prices, government policies, and global markets are risk factors for agriculture” (p. 2953). The exposure to such risks results in “uncertainties that can lead to large fluctuations in agricultural production and farm incomes” (Özkan and Dilay, 2018, p. 2953). For that matter, the facilitation of minimizing these risk factors by means of innovation and technologies is reasonable. Indeed, the loss of crops due to the drawbacks in risk prediction and mitigation, ineffective soil and disease management, and other problematic issues make a case for using artificial intelligence in agriculture possible (Bannerjee et al., 2018). From this perspective, the integration of artificial intelligence into the context of agriculture and farming, both animal and crops, provides significant benefits and is anticipated to yield effective results.

However, there are particularities in artificial intelligence development and implementation in the farming sector, which represent the opposing side of the debate about the usefulness and worth of introducing such solutions to the sector. Thus, multiple studies have been conducted to identify the risks that artificial intelligence contributes to the