Is artificial intelligence in farming's future?

Asta Roseway, principal research designer at Microsoft's Redmond research lab says AI will be part of farming's future. Photo / Sergey Soldatov

A top Microsoft researcher says in 10 years farmers will use artificial intelligence to maintain healthy yields despite climate change.

Asta Roseway, principal research designer at the tech giant's Redmond research lab, was one of several staff asked to predict advances in technology we'll see in their field in 2017, and in 2027.

She said farmers would be able to use artificial intelligence streaming capabilities to provide healthy yields "regardless of climate change, drought and disaster."

Roseway said alternative low-energy farming solutions including vertical farming and aquaponics would be essential by 2027.

"The future of food depends on our ability to preserve and improve the use of our planet's key resources and reduce over-farmed soil by shifting from traditional farming practices to alternative [ones]."

Roseway said we would also need to look more to urban spaces to "shoulder" our agricultural needs.

As for 2017? Roseway predicted the Internet of Things for agriculture would make gains "including a fusion of ubiqitous sensing, computer vision capabilities and cloud storage".

These would allow farmers to monitor and manage the health of their farms "from micro to macro levels".

Microsoft polled 17 of its female staff to mark Computer Science Education Week.

On its corporate blog it said "It's more critical than ever for everyone to be digitally literate, especially our kids ... This is particularly true for women and girls who, while representing roughly 50 percent of the world's population, account for less than 20 percent of computer science graduates in 34 OECD countries."

Read more of the predictions here