Introduction
Food security is a broad term used to describe an individual’s ability to have unrestricted access to an adequate quantity of nutritious and safe food. This food should meet the individual’s dietary and energy needs for an active and healthy life. Globally, the population of those within the food-insecure category has potentially nearly doubled in 2020 (FAO, 2020). This has continued to threaten the public health system and decrease human capital development. Adequate sustainable remedies for food insecurity must be put in place to attain a stable and reliable future (FAO, 2017). To achieve the sustainable development goal of a world free of hunger and malnutrition, emerging technologies must be incorporated to provide solutions to the global food crises. Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a vital role in stabilizing food security through massive data generation and utilization. Though at the budding stage of development and public adoption, the challenges that trail the application of AI have begun to be addressed.
Current Trend of Artificial Intelligence in Global Food Security
AI technologies allow the simulation of human intelligence in machines, capable of thinking, performing tasks intelligently, and acting rationally as humans. Of recent, AI technologies are known to demonstrate various human attributes such as creativity, emotion, sensing, perception, and even a good sense of judgment (Schuetz and Venkatesh, 2020; Benbya et al., 2021). The current trend and advances in technology have given rise to the use of AI in combating global food insecurity to protect approximately 800 million people globally from the scourge of hunger (Kunze, 2021). With the advent of AI technology, scientists and farmers can increase food security by accessing real-time soil conditions and implementing the necessary strategies for correcting nutrient deficiencies.
In addition, food scarcity can be averted through the use of AI as a massive amount of data is gathered and used to forecast developing situations affecting food supply (Gregory et al., 2020). This technology provides relevant information that will stabilize food supply, enhance rapid response time to price fluctuations, drought, disease outbreaks, poor weather conditions for food development, optimization of irrigation, and other global crop issues (Blasco et al., 2002; Chung et al., 2016; Chang and Lin, 2018; Talaviya et al., 2020). AI technology can improve the working conditions of farmers in rural communities by giving them access to technology and education awareness. It as well, increased crop yield that will in turn improve the economic conditions of the people. AI robotics and AI-enhanced drones have been implicated in crop planting, harvesting, farm fumigation, inspection, and security of workers (Arvind et al., 2017; Ahirwar et al., 2019). Despite the immense opportunities through AI technologies, the cognitive and rational framework of the technology, actual workers, and computer Programmemers are still required.
Challenges and Way Forward to the Use of AI Technology
Food security has been faced with significant difficulties like pandemics, social and military conflicts, drought, disease outbreaks, climate change, extreme weather conditions, the density of groundwater, and food wastage. Large-scale scientific interventions are currently underway to enhance the robustness and applicability of AI in global food security. Through this, adequate data which are quite difficult to gather will have real-time applicability in decision and policymaking. Though training and acquiring this technology can be expensive, the skills learned will add value and mobilize people out of extreme hunger and poverty. For global and rapid adoption by farmers, this technology could be Programmemed to be user-friendly and affordable to farmers.
Conclusion
There is a need to mitigate the current rise in global hunger through the use of emerging technologies. AI robotics and AI-enhanced drones can be improved to curtail the challenges mitigating global food security. Not only do these technologies improve food availability, but could be used to reduce human labor, monitor soil conditions, and correct nutrient deficiencies. Besides, farmers can utilize this technology to control pesticides and herbicides, enhance rapid response time to price changes, monitor and control plant disease outbreaks, forecast and mitigate food scarcity, and stabilize food supply.
References
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Miracle Uwa Livinus is a Lecturer II in the Department of Biochemistry, School of Science and Information Studies at Skyline University Nigeria. He has M.Sc in Nutritional Biochemistry from Nasarawa State University.
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