Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture

Abstract

Agriculture and AI—intuitively, these domains seem to denote two separate worlds. Agriculture processes the soil and cares about food production and elementary supply—this is really down-to-earth! AI, in contrast, is deeply interwoven with computerized systems, complex interactions, modeling and reasoning approaches, and in public perception still suffers from flair of science fiction. So why do we dedicate the present special issue to this combination? Modern Agriculture faces tremendous challenges. Today, the agricultural sector has grown into a highly competitive and globalized industry, where farmers and other actors have to consider local climatic and geographic aspects as well as global ecological and political factors in order to guarantee economical survival and sustainable production. Feeding a growing world population asks for continuous increases in food production, but arable land remains a limited resource. New requests for bio energy or changing diet preferences put additional strains on agricultural production, while settlement and transport consume increasing shares of land. Expected and observable changes in global climate, shifting rainfall patterns, global warming, droughts, or the increasing frequency and duration of extreme weather events endanger traditional production areas and bring new risks and uncertainties for global harvest yields. To cope with these challenges, Agriculture requires a continuous and sustainable increase in productivity and efficiency on all levels of agricultural production, while resources like water, energy, fertilizers etc. need to be used carefully and efficiently in order to protect and sustain the environment and the soil quality of the arable land. The complexity of the challenge is