Cutting-edge capabilities

One of the most famous technological breakthroughs of recent memory has undoubtedly been generative AI. For example, take ChatGPT or other chatbots which have fundamentally changed how people communicate. Users can ask them to generate anything from meal plans and social media posts designed to go viral, to detailed business proposals and computer programs.

Generally, chatbots are trained on large sets of information. This information then forms the basis of the answer that’s generated when a user asks a question. With the right data set you can put expert advice directly in the palm of a user's hand in seconds.

This kind of technology has huge potential to transform agriculture. Farmers face complex challenges and need access to specialist knowledge quickly. Getting experts out to help every farmer would be a logistical impossibility. But what if farmers everywhere could carry with them a digital agronomist, able to answer their questions in a tailored and accessible way?

A new partnership between Syngenta and Amazon Web Services (AWS) has managed to achieve this by adding a specialist AI chatbot into the Cropwise digital platform – Cropwise AI.

Cropwise and the future of digital agronomy

The Cropwise platform is a connected ecosystem of apps and digital services that allows farmers to do everything from getting advice on seed selection and information on the best time to apply crop protection, to ways of maximizing their prices when they take a commodity to market.

Over the years, farmers have taken advantage of new technologies to improve their practices, such as precision application of crop protection products or using satellite imagery to monitor crop health. The Cropwise suite has become an essential partner for farmers globally, with around 70 million hectares of land – an area roughly twice the size of Germany – currently connected to one of the various Cropwise apps.

But the team behind Cropwise has continued to develop the functionality of the platform to respond quickly to farmers’ needs and to the new possibilities that generative AI chatbots present. Justin Welch, Head of Digital Agriculture for Syngenta Seeds, explains: “It was a real team effort, but we got Cropwise AI ready in two years.”

What makes Cropwise AI unique is the way that it builds upon Syngenta’s years of innovation across digital technologies, machine learning and computer vision.

Thanks to the popularity of Cropwise, Syngenta has access to a huge array of sophisticated data covering everything from weather patterns and disease symptoms to satellite imagery stretching back 20 years.

But that’s not all - as Syngenta is a leader in agricultural research, Cropwise also has access to the insights from observations on crop growth stages, and historical yield data from on-farm trials. All of this contributes to a powerful data set and makes Cropwise AI a groundbreaking digital agricultural expert.

So, what can Cropwise AI do?

Ethical, dependable technology

As a crucial part of the development process, Cropwise AI went through careful and rigorous testing. The team collected expert questions and then ran them against the new Cropwise AI model. The answers that were returned were tested through human evaluation and against another large language model. Results were recently published in a blog for AWS and showed that Cropwise AI scored extremely highly in terms of concision, relevance and the faithfulness of information it provides.

When used on the ground by sales advisors, Cropwise AI allowed them to generate detailed and analytical recommendations for farmers up to five times quicker than traditional methods.

But it’s not just important to make sure that AI models are reliable – it’s also vital that they are deployed ethically and responsibly. It’s for exactly that reason that Syngenta has an AI manifesto – 10 commitments governing how the company handles data and AI.

Key to these commitments is putting the farmer at the center of how the data is used. Serg Masis, Senior Data Scientist at Syngenta, explains: “Cropwise AI was designed around the manifesto as this allows for us to respond to what customers need and at the same time make sure our use of AI is transparent and easy to understand.”

Currently the app is being used by a few hundred Golden Harvest sales teams across North America before being rolled out to thousands of farmers there later this year.

Ryan Vogelzang, GHX and Digital Agronomy Product Manager, was involved in testing out the Cropwise AI chatbot on the ground. “It’s been really well received – people have been excited about what it can do, and the ways it can scale in the future,” he says.

The benefits of the Cropwise AI aren’t just in the information it can provide but the way it helps experts understand what farmers need.

“This is a cyclical business so it’s great to have a resource like this – a farmer might ask for recommendations for a certain field but if you’ve not been there for six months, that’s a challenge Cropwise AI can help solve,” explains Vogelzang.

On top of that, the new AI helps organize and display vital information quickly and easily. “Using this we can see whether a farmer would be ready for a delivery, or if they’ve made use of our financing tools like AgriClime,” he adds.

When agronomy advisors have access to this kind of information it helps them work more closely with farmers and make better, more efficient, decisions.

As we look to feed a growing population using fewer resources, Cropwise AI stands at the forefront of this challenge, ushering in a new era of smart, data-driven farming. With this new technology, the path to higher yields and sustainable farming isn't just within reach – it’s literally in the palm of farmers’ hands.