By virtue of being a general purpose technology highly capable of very specific individual on-farm applications, Generative AI is proliferating as many differing uses as there are different farmers ... so, what’s already occurring here on UK farms and globally?
The Most Common Wins
Across farms, wins already in practice are the deep analysis of farm accounts and business plans; modelling grain marketing strategies; farm sourcing and procurement; agronomy spray programme drafting; farm assurance paperwork, well-structured letter/email writing to officials. Also, spreadsheets are faster to set up and easier to maintain; assurance documentation is quicker to assemble and check; accounts reviews are identifying options that can change decisions; spray programmes are clearer and easier to audit; formal letters, when required, are more expertly written and more persuasive; sourcing/farm buying searches deliver immediately usable picks of best supplier contact details with their prices (rather than search pages of links that eat time to scan and read individually); and lengthy new announcements or rule changes are readily reduced to the salient facts affecting the farm business.
Farm Office Work & Assurance Compliance
AI is highly rated for helping to draft Red Tractor/Leaf and other assurance materials, summarising lengthy documents and slide decks into short farmer-friendly language, triaging incoming emails and automatically producing well-aimed draft replies, and structuring planning applications with relevant policy references. It can turn 'messy' figures into tidy cashflow projections with scenarios and compare the hard numbers on finance repayment strategies, extract insights from abbatoir killsheets, and speed up machinery part number look-ups. Notably for some, it provides writing support that’s especially helpful for the dyslexic user. And existing spreadsheet farmer-afficionados are reporting GenAI to be proving to be a 'game-changing' boon.
Husbandry of Crop Agronomy & Farm Livestock
Out on the farm AI can prepare and check both spray and fertiliser calibration sheets, deliver 'excellent' spray programme recommendations, for training it can, for example, generate quick PA1 revision prompts, and it can keep a running agronomy advisory thread by asking for regular crop and weed photos. Reports include correct wheat yield estimates and dairy and beef cattle ration suggestions. Use for identifying weeds and crop fungal diseases with crop protection suggestions. Analysing ewe performance over time in sheep breeding programme. It works well as a grain-drying “consultant” to hit grain quality targets, to help get to the bottom of a sudden drop in milk yields, to attempt to adjust layer rations for egg size, and to draft risk assessments such as spraying crop protection products near water.
Field Operations & Machinery Support
Loading lengthy machinery pdf manuals enables the AI to act like an instant expert-in-the-cab for settings adjustments, for example in a combine. It has been used to explore drilling dates and costs from on-farm trial data, identify old machinery models from photographs for sourcing spares, and even sorting out that most annoying of office IT glitches - printer problems.
