Implementing Ethical and Responsible AI in Agricultural Practices: An Applied Perspective

Farming is experiencing a shift in Artificial Intelligence (AI), opening its doors to precision farming, improving method for disease tracking, and providing smarter management of agricultural resources. Despite this new wave, it is also accompanied by sets of ethical questions regarding transparency, fairness, and privacy of data. While these questions are debated in industries, the focus has not shifted to how the principles play out in the fields. This study aims to determine whether global and regional AI frameworks truly fit the needs of agricultural farmers and users, and seeks to determine how knowledgeable farmers, researchers, and developers are about ethical AI. To obtain a clear understanding, a mixed approach of reviewing existing works and conducting a survey with AI professionals and agricultural workers was adopted. The results from the study proved to be a wake-up call, with over half the audience surveyed not being familiar with ethical AI concepts and only about 28% knowing about any actual regulations or policies of AI. Despite this, there was general agreement that the burden of ethics is not on one person but on everyone involved in the development, legislation, and farmers who use the tool. In addition, areas such as China, the UAE, and the EU, which adopted AI frameworks early, based on the findings, showed that they gained traction in agricultural innovations. The study concluded by suggesting that better policy outreach through education and cross-field collaborations would enable AI to support sustainable farming and protect farmers rights.