Crop facial recognition and robotic milking systems are just two ways artificial intelligence and automation are being introduced into agriculture to improve efficiency and reduce labor costs.
Yu Zhang, an assistant professor of integrative plant science at Cornell University, said one form of technology he’s been working on is facial recognition-type software for crops. They are testing it in their vineyards.
Cows in a barn at Walnut Ridge Dairy. (Emily Kenney/Spectrum News 1)
“What this robot is doing is identifying areas of infected foliage and canopy in the vineyard,” Zhang said. “Then we will be able to generate maps to see the severity of disease transmission across the vineyard.”
The map will then be used to determine where and how much fungicide or insecticide needs to be applied, Zhang said.
“Previously, we thought that if we found some of the infection, everything should be uniformly infected in the field, but that was never the case in the actual farm system,” he said. . “We can now perform the application of the volatility, which will allow us to be more precise when working with those types of chemicals.”
Entrance to Walnut Ridge Dairy. (Emily Kenney/Spectrum News 1)
This is not only beneficial from an environmental point of view, he said, but also economically as these chemicals can be expensive.
An AI unit costs between $30,000 and $35,000, but Jiang said the driving force behind adopting the technology is to offset rising labor costs.
“In a 100-acre apple orchard, you can’t really see how much nuts there are on each tree. “But now, with these AI-powered tools, we have the opportunity to quantify how our apple orchards are yielding.”
Walnut Ridge Dairy in Lansing milks 17,000 cows twice daily and grows 2,400 acres of fodder to feed them.
Pedometers worn by cows at Walnut Ridge Dairy to track activity and milk production. (Emily Kenney/Spectrum News 1)
One of the farm’s executives, John Fleming, said the farm has put in place several strategies to reduce labor costs and use AI and technology to increase efficiency.
One of them was a robot that disinfects and cleans cows’ teats after milking to prevent mastitis and other infections.
“The first reason we invested in this was to save labor costs.
Another benefit they noticed after installing the robot was the low infection rate in cows.
“It’s the worst I’ve had in 30 years working here,” he said. “We have definitely confirmed the reliability of this unit.”
John Fleming demonstrates a cropping system on a tractor. (Emily Kenney/Spectrum News 1)
In 2017, the dairy built a rotary milk parlor where cows enter and exit the rotating parlor for milking. They wear pedometers on their ankles to track which cows are in which barn and their activity for the day.
In the field, Fleming has implemented other techniques to collect data such as yield and soil moisture, but the challenge is finding someone to interpret it. “It’s hard to see how important it is and how much you can use it to make good decisions,” he says.
But as new advances continue, the challenge for farmers will be deciding whether it’s worth the investment, Fleming said.
“Everybody thinks they have the best, but it’s all going to need to be evaluated,” he said.
While the farm wants to continue cutting labor costs, Fleming said he doesn’t want artificial intelligence to replace human labor on the farm.
“I don’t want to see it go so far as to replace too many people,” he said. “Because not all decisions are made strictly by numbers, we are able to work very efficiently and at the same time have a happy environment with creative and intelligent people around us.”
A robot that cleans cows after milking. (Emily Kenney/Spectrum News 1)
This kind of technology will leave some farms behind, said Jessica Maxwell, executive director of the New York Workers Center in China.
“This technology is incredibly expensive and out of reach for most farms,” says Maxwell. “Only the largest, most profitable farms can afford it.”
Maxwell said farm workers have an advantage that machines do not: the ability to make observations.
“Most workers know that these jobs are not so predictable and that things change,” she said. “You have to constantly adapt to new situations, new conditions and observations about cows, which makes mechanization very difficult.”
Changes in the minimum wage and rising labor costs will require adjustments for dairy farmers, Maxwell said.
“We continue to search for these complex solutions, even though what we really need to do is change the outdated federal pricing system that creates artificial standards for farmers. “We are doing it,” said Maxwell.
