How can artificial intelligence improve soil management?

AI is a great tool to o regrade all the innovative tools that have been developed over the last 20 years. The integration of satellite data, yield data and in situ testing can help reduce nutrient overload, wasted costs while increasing yields.

Sensors and GPS technologies are widely used in soil mapping activities and these innovative tools are important to increase crop production. Physico-chemical soil composition like soil moisture, soil temperature and other parameters like overall soil health, soil fertility, insect pests and disease damages can be gathered using remote sensing. Advances in soil mapping with 3D maps provide more reliable information for farmers to learn soil status and identify measures to improve and enrich poor soils with this tool. More efficient use of resources like water and fertilizers can also be optimized. Allocation of resources to specific locations within the farm can be done early with this tools.

Having accurate, detailed databases for local soils is essential for long term sustained agriculture. Knowing your inventory is the first step in being able to create management regimes and use best practices to conserve the soil while optimizing production. Having soil mapped is the best way to know your inventory and to provide protection for these, limited areas. Open databases that are available to the public are a great tool for making the public aware of the limited resource and would go a long way to educating the public and preserving the limited resource for future generations.

Soil monitoring can be done with the used of AI maximizing on the the different platforms to collect data on soils. Optical sensors are commonly used to detect changes in soil color. Using drones, photos of the soil and color gradients can be accurately taken and images can be used to interpret soil status. Electrochemical sensors can detect element compostion of potassium, nitrates and others including their electrical properties. Using these tools, farmers can get information and alerts when soil conditions are not optimal and measures can be implemented. It also can serve as early warning to them to decide better based on recommendations.

The traditional method of physically sampling your soil and having testing completed will never stop being a useful tool for soil management. Nutrient management plans, alternate cropping methods, and technology will greatly assist us in soil management and preservation. Use of drones, with various sensors can assist with increased amounts of land being assessed in a shorter time or on more frequent intervals. Efficient monitoring can find problems faster and provide timely solutions using technology. Using AI can be very useful by using modelling based on historic information to predict many problems before they become a problem.

AI will be very useful by quickly identifying problems and providing fast solutions to various issues facing us with regards to soil use. If good data is fed into the system, it could actually predict present and future problems based on past data and current climate regimes to assist in faster remediation techniques or even prevent the problem before remediation is required. AI allows vast amounts of data from all over the world to be centralized and allow much more accurate and timely production of information for many soil, agriculture, and climate issues. It would be a great tool for assessing world remediation levels over time. It would allow us to see if we are making progress, and if so, how much.

There is no one solution to managing soil efficiently, we have to use many tools. Old school information from past farmers is always useful information. They managed land to the best of their ability and often resulted in generational farm homesteads. Today, we often see mega farms that have to resort to artificial fertilizers and we often see areas of land that have been farmed to intensively and become unusable in a short time. The cost of remediation can often be high, if it is successful at all. Much better to manage properly and prevent situations that result in expensive remediation.