Introducing Artificial Intelligence: A way to improve Pakistan’s agricultural productivity

 
 
 
Introducing Artificial Intelligence: A way to improve Pakistan's agriculture productivity

Artificial intelligence (AI) in agriculture is emerging as a digital way forward for increasing farm productivity and introducing innovative technological solutions to improve farming. In Pakistan, agriculture is considered the backbone of the country’s economic growth. It contributes around 21% to the GDP and employs more than 42% of the country’s workforce (GoP, 2022). With agro-based products, the sector fetches 80 percent of the country’s total export earnings and offers raw materials to major industries, including textile, leather, rice processing, edible oil, sugar and some others.

The sector is facing several challenges including, low productivity, poor seed quality, increased crop diseases, inadequate farming and irrigation facilities, and lack of agriculture knowledge to farmers. To address these issues, AI can be used to increase the sector’s efficiency and improve productivity. Many countries, including the USA, China, and European nations achieved commendable successes in the agriculture sector by utilising modern technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the agriculture sector. Artificial Intelligence in the farming sector is playing an important role in resolving problems, including management of crops, soil, water, climate changes and even marketing of agricultural products in different developed countries of the world.

Artificial Intelligence can help the agriculture sector in many ways including forecasts about the weather changing patterns, temperature, moisture, the pace of wind, soil condition, harvesting technology, detection of disease in crops/plants, and poor plant nutrition and it also presents a precise solution to all problems of crops. In AI technology, a drone camera flies over a field and takes images of fields within a few minutes and the images could easily identify the affected areas of the crop. With the help of AI, a better and more timely decision for the treatment of the damaged portions of the field could be taken.

Development of the agricultural sector on modern lines has become the need of the hour because without involving modern techniques, Pakistan can never achieve its goal towards food security. Due to the current food insecurity and the flood situation, the government and the experts of Information Technology (IT) must ensure the use of modern technology in the agriculture sector instead of conventional methods.

Share this post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

IMARAT Institute of Policy Studies

Interested in knowing more about us?

Sign up for our newsletter