Foreword

It gives me immense pleasure to introduce the book “Future Farming: Advancing Agriculture with Artificial Intelligence” edited by Dr. Praveen Kumar Shukla, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, School of Engineering, Babu Banarasi Das University, Lucknow, India and Dr. Tushar Kanti Bera, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, India. I appreciate the sincere efforts of the editors and authors of the book in framing the content on the most recent and promising area of smart agriculture.

The application of technology-driven solutions in the implementation of agricultural activities is a key concern in the agriculture sector nowadays. Basically, it is one of the most effective ways of raising agricultural production and subsequently fulfilling the food requirements in society. Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), Robotics, Drones, Sensors, Telecommunications, Data Analytics, Satellite, Geo-positioning Systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, etc. are the most promising technologies being utilized in smart agriculture. The implementation of smart agriculture is helping farmers by automating agricultural activities, i.e. monitoring of crop health, prediction of crop yield, variable rate irrigation, precise use of fertilizers, diagnosis and curing the crop diseases.

Although there are many advantages of applying technology in the agricultural activities, but its adoption in society is still facing problems. The reasons may be of social acceptance and lack of awareness, lack of light weight intelligent algorithms for precise decision making, data and quality of data for real time decision making, financial issues, security concerns for the deployed systems, etc.

I feel that this book will be an outstanding contribution to the researchers working in the area of smart and precision agriculture.