Richard Pallardy, Freelance Writer

September 13, 2024

Agriculture -- the cultivation of domestic plants and animals -- is believed to have begun in earnest some 12,000 years ago in the so-called Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. The management and harvest of plants likely began much earlier, but the techniques developed in this region allowed humans to form large settlements that developed into the complex, urban centers that now define our species. This was the first of a series of agricultural revolutions.

The increasing sophistication of agriculture in the ensuing centuries has supported an ever-burgeoning population. A second agricultural revolution began in Britain in the 17th century and included the introduction of new irrigation techniques, fertilizers, and means of transporting agricultural products. And the projected population collapse of the 20th century was averted by the Green Revolution, or third agricultural revolution, beginning in the 1940s, which saw huge increases in crop yields due to new fertilizers and pesticides.

Now, a fourth revolution is in the offing. Technological advancements including deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) -- digitally enabled devices that collect and transmit data -- and artificial intelligence are creating new efficiencies that are likely to again fundamentally change the practice that has allowed our species to dominate the planet.

Related:Farming in the Digital Age

Gathering centuries worth of historical data and integrating it with new information collected by novel devices will allow farmers to radically refine their planting, watering, pest management, and harvesting strategies -- leading to increases in yields and decreases in detrimental environmental effects. There are already nearly 100 million connected devices in use by farmers today and that number will only grow as the people who feed us continue to digitize their operations.

Here, InformationWeek investigates the rise of IoT and AI in farming operations, with insights from Lisa Avvocato, vice president of global marketing for AI and computer vision data annotation company Sama, Mike Flaxman, vice president of product at big data analytics company HEAVY.AI, and Valeria Kogan, founder and CEO of Fermata, which offers AI solutions for monitoring plant health.

(Editor's note: This feature story covers AI's contributions to agriculture. However, AI also competes with agriculture, for resources like land and water. These issues will be covered in more depth in upcoming InformationWeek sustainability coverage.)