Adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in agriculture is not a foregone conclusion. Despite the technology’s perceived effectiveness in making crop production more efficient, the associated costs are still too high for farmers.
“Right now, a lot of these technologies come with huge price tags for just the cost of purchasing the equipment,” said Lynn Sosnoskie, assistant professor with Cornell University. She presented at the Southeastern Specialty Crop Technology Conference & Show in Tifton, Georgia on May 5. “There’s other costs that come with it as well,” she added. “There are subscription fees, maintenance costs and other operational costs.”
Technological advancements featured at the conference included a solar-powered spot spraying robot, AI mechanical weeders and autonomous multipurpose robots. All were demonstrated during the field portions of the show and were featured as tools to help growers be more efficient. But their high price tags may preclude many growers from experiencing that efficiency.
“There might be costs you don’t even anticipate,” Sosnoskie said. “This might be a perfect tool or technology for a grower to use, but it doesn’t pair with his tractor. So now he’s going to have to maybe rent a tractor if he wants to be able to use that technology. That’s a scenario that we actually had in New York. We had a grower who wanted to use electrical weeding, and it was working. But he didn’t have a tractor with a big enough engine and enough horsepower to power the electrical weeding generator. So, he had to rent a tractor.”
Sosnoskie said researchers like herself need to collaborate with economists to lay out what those expenses look like and what the return on investment (ROI) should be. An ROI is a financial metric that assesses an investment’s profitability by comparing its gain or loss in relation to its cost. Growers must determine if specific pieces of equipment with advanced technologies are financially feasible for their particular farming operations.
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