Ifac is “100% encouraging” small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the food and agri-sector to get on board with artificial intelligence (AI) and to use it in their businesses.
Ifac’s Food and Agribusiness Report 2023, released today (Thursday, September 14), found that only 21% of the SMEs in the food and agribusiness sector are using AI at present, meaning 79% are not.
Speaking to Agriland, David Leydon, Ifac’s head of food and agribusiness, said that businesses need to be tuned into AI going forward.
“This time last year I don’t think any of us were really talking about AI…You need to embrace this and lean into it,” he siad.
“This is part of the world, it’s going to be a really dominant part of our lives for the rest of our lives.”
Leydon outlined four examples of how AI can be used for food and agribusiness SMEs.
These include marketing, particularly for the creation of social media posts; customer service, where AI can be linked to a customer service system to “create sensible answers for your customers”; using AI for language translation for businesses looking to expand oversees; and on the development side, using AI on computer code.
“There’s massive opportunity with AI, and I suppose, what we’re flagging here is food business owners and agri-business owners need to lean into that now,” Leydon said.
“It might fascinate and frighten them in equal measure, but they have to lean into it and understand it. It would be a bit like Google landed on the planet and you said you’re going to ignore it completely, you’re not going to use a search engine.
“It’s the same thing now. If you aren’t engaging in AI and actively leaning into it and looking at how it can be used, you’re the same as the person that said they’re not going to use a search engine,” he added.
Ifac report finds SMEs ‘firefighting daily’
The Ifac report also found that 26% of respondents were “firefighting daily rather than proactively managing the business”.
Explaining this statistic, Leydon said: “It means instead of going into the business as a senior leadership team or a management team and planning the future in a structured, planned way, you’re actually rushing around trying to actively deal with crises that have come up that morning or that day.”
He added: “It’s the opposite of being planned and everything being under control, you’re flat out dealing with the latest crisis, which really is a barrier and inhibitor to planning the future well, having those serious sales calls with new potential clients, because you’re in the businesses firefighting everyday. So it’s a barrier to growth.”
According to Leydon, this issue is linked to staffing levels, increases in interest rates, and cost savings that are needed because input costs have increased dramatically.
“75% of the businesses we surveyed reported an increase in costs this year. Last year that was 84%, so you have these cost increases on cost increases. That’s very challenging,” the Ifac official said.
He added: “When you’re in that sort of bind, and where you’re struggling with staffing levels, they all lead to some level of firefighting.”