The development of fertilizers, motorized equipment, etc. were the efficiency drivers in the agricultural industry in the past, but going forward, AI will be at the forefront:

• Algorithms can help farmers maximize output or to minimize input for a specified goal. This includes fine-tuning and the use of fertilizers or pesticides, so these are only applied where needed, optimizing water usage, planting times, and so on. This goes hand in hand with computer vision technology, drones, and similar tech that helps farmers monitor the health of their plants timely and cheaply.

• AI can also help automate tasks, including harvesting, weeding, watering, and so on via self-driving tractors, harvesters, weeding, and cutting robots, and so on.

• AI offers powerful tools for animal farming as well, via on-animal sensors/wearables that offer real-time health data, via automated feeding systems that can help optimize growth and bring down labor costs, AI-powered drug research, etc.

• AI-based predictions help farmers decide what to plant where and when, so demand and supply can be better matched, and predictive algorithms can also help farmers prepare for natural disasters as early as possible. Farmers even can use predictive algorithms to forecast what the yield on their crops will be, so they can plan their finances better, and technologies like predictive maintenance helps reduce costs for their machinery and prevent break-downs during peak working times when reliability is key.

How Can Investors Benefit From AI Usage In Agriculture?

We usually don’t invest in agriculture companies, and there aren’t that many agricultural companies that are publicly traded, since many farms and agricultural businesses are family-owned.

Still, many companies that look nothing like agricultural businesses have important ties to this sector and benefit from increased tech and AI access.

The pick-and-shovel investments, such as Deere (NYSE: DE), offer some AI exposure, via AI-assisted machinery and AI software tools. CNH Industrial (NYSE: CNH) is another equipment play. Bunge (NYSE:BG) and ADM (NYSE:ADM) are leaders in multiplying crop yields, and Zoetis (NYSE: ZTS) and IDEXX Labs (NASDAQ: IDXX) both specialize in animal health medicine and equipment. All are benefitted by AI driven solutions.

Investors can also benefit from increased AI use in the agricultural industry by investing in tech pure-plays that are important partners for the agricultural industry. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), for example, offers an Artificial Intelligence assistant called Oz that is optimized for agricultural tasks.

International Business Machines (NASDAQ: IBM) is another big tech company that works with the agricultural industry using its Watson AI tool, which helps with weather predictions and allows farmers to utilize sensor data for crop monitoring, yield forecasting, and so on.

On the back end of the tech used here, companies such as Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) come into play, as they are key in supporting data handling and algorithm training, via AWS and NVIDIA’s GPUs, respectively.

Investors that are interested in broader exposure to the world of tech and Artificial Intelligence should take a look at our top picks.