Crop production estimation using deep learning technique

Abstract

Reliable estimation of crop requirement and production in advance, help policy makers to adopt timely decision for trade as export–import, which is a basic building block to assure food security of a country. A powerful and robust algorithm is essential to predict the future demand and production of a particular crop for subsequent years. Deep learning methods are used successfully in solving different prediction pro­blems of various applications. This study attempts to design an efficient AI based technique specifically using long short-term memory, a deep learning approach for estimation of crop production using crop production information of neighbouring countries, which are part of the South Asian monsoon system. Detailed sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify the optimal combination of crop production of neighbouring countries that directly and indirectly impact the crop production of India. Here, we designed and developed a predictive model for rice production of India with lead time of one year using deep learning technique. Along with that, as there are significant influences of local climate (i.e. rainfall data) on crop production, that information was also considered along with crop production of neighbouring countries. The results indi­cated that local and regional scale parameters jointly improve the prediction capability for future years. Capability of the proposed model was validated with export–import data on crop of India and neighbouring countries, and the validation result showed that our proposed technique was efficient and robust in nature