AI and the Politics of Agriculture

By 2050 we must increase world food production. FarmBeats uses AI, Edge, and IoT for agriculture. The digital architectures of FarmBeats is a mesh of long-range TV frequencies to connect with and capture data from solar powered sensors in the fields. This is buttressed by a flock of drones to gather aerial information as machine learning algorithms mine and refine the data in Data Refineries. Reports are produced using the raw data, and unrelated pools of data are combined to produce new data lakes. The analysis of the data is sent to farmers with recommendations.

In Kyoto, AI is used with a farm of robots to nurture seedlings, replant, water, adjust lighting and CO2, and harvest crops. A mesh of algorithms and sensors attached to the plants allows the real time monitoring of temperature, water levels, and plant tissue health. The outcome is a model to grow the tastiest foods possible.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, food security will turn on who owns the data. Private ownership of one’s data sounds attractive, but it is unclear what that actually means. Humans have thousands of years regulating the ownership of land for cultivation. In the recent past, saltwater slavery in the Caribbean enlarged the pool of investable funds that produced a trade pattern that fostered industrialization in Europe and plantation economies elsewhere.

Over the last two centuries, humans have become nimble in the ownership of industry, and can become a shareholder of an EV company. But, we have very limited experience in the ownership of data. This is an inherently far more difficult task because unlike plantations and machines, data is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Data can move at the speed of light, and we can create as many copies of it as we like. How then do we prevent a small elite from monopolizing the data streams from farms and fields? But many remain far from the edge of this flourishing future.

Visa programs for guest farm workers have changed repeatedly between 2012 and 2021. An unstable agricultural workforce has led to crackdowns on undocumented migrant farm workers, and huge cargo ships that must technically fit through the Suez Canal test the physical limits of our supply chains. Every year about thirty-three per cent of the food produced for human consumption – 1.3 billion tons – is wasted or lost.

Large servings, and restaurant menus with catalogues of choices culminate in uneaten meals, and discarded leftovers. Supermarket chains are reluctant to donate surplus products to charities because of legal liabilities. Ultimately, forty per cent of food waste occurs at the retail and consumer level in the industrialized world. In developing economies, the aetiology of food waste happens during the harvesting, storage, and processing stages. Unskilled labourers make huge errors, imported machines malfunction or are deemed to be inoperable as spare parts are no longer available. Razor thin margins barricade contingency planning in cases of disease outbreaks, like listeria, which leads to mass recalls.

In Eastern Europe growing nationalism, civil unrest, and farmworker strikes a few years ago led to disruptions of frozen food supply chains. The key products produced in Eastern Europe were destined for more affluent markets outside of their own struggling economies. Additionally, the products were perishable and had to be transported from Eastern European farms to factories in Western Europe for cleansing, preparation, and processing into frozen foods for global distribution. Unseasonable weather, and extreme weather conditions added another layer of unforeseen complexity. Rising sea levels and the climate crisis appeared to be a problem somewhere else. But catastrophic droughts, and atmospheric rivers decimated acres of crops.

In 2024, the spring honey harvest in France dropped by as much as eighty per cent in some regions, with many bees dying from starvation because of poor weather. Low temperatures and relentless rain have led to colony collapse as the bees were unable to forage. Relentless rain forces the bees to stay inside their hives instead of flying out to collect nectar. During these periods, they consume their reserves. Temperatures that are cooler than usual also prevent flowers from producing the nectar essential for bees’ survival and honey making.

The decline in honey production is more than an economic issue – it hints at a broader environmental and ecological crisis. Bees pollinate around ninety per cent of flowering plants. That makes bees critical not just for biodiversity but food security. Globally, seventy-five per cent of food crop production depends at least partially on pollinators – including about 20,000 bee species.

In a previous era, poor policy and phytophthora infestans, a fungus-like organism that moves from the tubers to the stems causing late blight, led to the potato famine that decimated Ireland in the 1840s. Today, similar vulnerabilities still exist, and so farmers are thinking of bringing traditional agriculture not just indoors but underground. In these new ecosystems, the progress of every single crop will and can be quantified by sensors, artificial lighting, robotics, algorithms, AI, and optimization analytics.  Expansive plant factories will grow genetically edited crops that use fewer resources, cause less damage to the environment and soil health, and produce greater yields.