AI and robots can help the world grow more food—even if they’re still not quite as good as a human farmer

Conferences·Brainstorm AIAI and robots can help the world grow more food—even if they’re still not quite as good as a human farmerBy Cecilia HultBy Cecilia HultCecilia HultCecilia Hult is an editorial intern based in Hong Kong.SEE FULL BIO Feroz Sheikh, chief information and digital officer at the Syngenta Group, speaking at Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore on July 23.FortuneThe world population is still growing every year

The amount of farmland is not

That means farmers will need to find ways to use their limited land more efficiently

AI could help, according to agriculture executives. “Humanity does not have enough food to put on the table for everybody,” Feroz Sheikh, chief information and digital officer of the Syngenta Group, said at the Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore conference last week. “By 2050, we will need 600 million hectares of additional land

That is almost four times the agricultural land in Europe.” Syngenta has built a network of Modern Agriculture Platform, or MAP centers, in China to help solve this blem

The centers use digital agricultural systems—nology drones, robots, and AI—to help local growers maximize their farmland’s potential. “Simple advice can really help imve the yield for these farmers,” Sheikh explained

Malaysia-based Agroz Group is also leveraging AI to help farmers

The company created “Copilot for Farmers” by training an AI model on their standard operating cedures

Junior growers can take a picture of a plant they are growing, and Agroz Copilot will identify whether it’s healthy or not

Founder and CEO Gerard Lim described it as “a tool that puts the power of most senior and experienced growers in the palm of your hands.” Additionally, Lim noted that he sees robotics as the next phase for the Agroz Group after agentic AI is perfected. “Humanoid robots will work in our indoor farms and in our greenhouses bably by next year,” he predicted Japanese firm AGRIST is already using robots to imve harvesting efficiency on farms

Today’s agricultural robots still aren’t as efficient at harvesting fruits and vegetables as humans

Yet farmers “don’t need a perfect robot,” explained Junichi Saito, AGRIST founder and CEO

Robots are needed “for solving the issue of shortage of labor” in farming, Saito said

His vision is for “AI and the robot and human being [to] collaborate with each other to make the world happier.”