Bayer announces the launch of the GenAI system for agriculture

 Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing agriculture by providing innovative solutions to traditional farming challenges. From optimizing crop yields to enhancing livestock management, AI technologies are reshaping the landscape of modern agriculture.

Of the 2024 trends in digital agriculture, the role played by generative Artificial intelligence (Gen AI) may be the most important. The potential impact of generative AI on the global economy is already in the trillions of dollars. This is a historic opportunity to optimize processes, cut costs and, more importantly, spark innovation to support decision making through improved modeling.

The application of generative artificial intelligence through digital crop advisors enables agronomists to disaggregate large amounts of agronomic data into actionable recommendations for farmers. These tools enhance crop management by analyzing large-scale agronomic data to provide AI-powered insights that help farmers understand patterns affecting crop varieties and production performance on their specific farms, and track climate trends to help farmers better adapt to a changing climate.

Recently, Bayer announced that the GenAI expert system will be piloted to benefit farmers and senior agronomists in their daily work. The company has been training a large language model (LLM) using proprietary agronomic data that includes years of internal data, insights from thousands of trials across its vast test network, and hundreds of years of accumulated experience from Bayer agronomists worldwide.

In this way, the expert system can quickly and accurately answer questions related to agronomy, farm management and Bayer agricultural products. This intuitive system is able to respond to natural language and generate expert information in seconds. Validated by agronomists, the pilot project has unlocked productivity for Bayer teams in the United States while significantly outperforming the LLM that currently serves the agricultural market out of the box.

Features of GenAI expert system: 

Innovative agronomic Artificial Intelligence: Bayer announced the launch of the groundbreaking GenAI system, which uses proprietary agronomic data to assist farmers and agronomists.

Information transfer Efficiency: The system promises to quickly and accurately answer agronomic and farm management questions, thereby enhancing the decision-making process. 

Collaborative development: Bayer partnered with Microsoft and Ernst & Young (EY) to explore integrating GenAI technology into its broader digital offerings.

Expansion and accessibility: Bayer plans to expand the pilot to agronomists and potential farmers, aiming to democratize access to important agronomic advice. 

Advances in digital agriculture: Bayer continues to develop digital solutions for sustainable agriculture, including new cloud products and data connectivity services.

Currently, when a farmer asks an agronomic consultant a series of detailed questions about a product's characteristics, performance under certain conditions and application amounts, the consultant needs to search online, text colleagues, gather information from multiple sources and compile a response, while the farmer has to wait hours or days for much-needed information. Bayer's expert GenAI system is changing the rules of the game, making it faster and easier for people to get better information.

Bayer, which worked with Microsoft and Ernst & Young (EY) to develop the tool, is exploring ways to integrate the expert GenAI system into its digital offerings, and the company anticipates extensive collaboration with other agricultural products and partners. The tool is designed as a global feature that will benefit millions of smallholder farmers in the future by democratizing access to critical agronomic advice and product information, which is critical to feeding communities and increasing global food security.

Bayer aims to expand the pilot of the expert GenAI system to selected agronomists and potential farmers as early as this year, while continuing to advance separate GenAI prototypes that allow users to directly query their own farm data. Because these GenAI tools also extract insights from closed datasets, they are unique in agriculture and will bring much more meaningful value to farmers, agronomists, and other industry users than off-the-shelf LLMS that only use open source data.

Amanda McClerren, Chief Information Officer and Head of Digital Transformation and Information Technology at Bayer Crop Science, said: "Our unique GenAI system is expected to serve agronomists around the world and benefit farmers, further advancing artificial intelligence as an indispensable technology in agriculture. While we will continue to leverage traditional AI to develop better products, we are also committed to leveraging new GenAI technologies in a thoughtful way to empower and support the knowledge experts within the industry to bring value to farmers and those who serve them.”