Digital agriculture may sound odd to our ears, but it is fast becoming a reality, thanks to continuous and greater policy interventions by the Government of India into promoting farm and field-based development and advancement. This transformational journey promises big for crores of agricultural households, who need constant addition to their earnings. Since digital technologies are powerful means for connecting faster with the concerned people, streamlining processes, supporting innovations, bringing in transparency, ensuring efficiency and creating revenue streams, the Centre is putting in a lot of efforts to harness their power to pilot innovative ways, tools and approaches for agriculture sector. Digital agriculture doesn’t only intend to increase the income of farmers and rural households, but also inspire youth entrepreneurs to involve in agriculture and rural economy, which does generate jobs for the youth.
The ubiquity, mobility and agility of digital technologies have already transformed agriculture and food production in many parts of the globe. The widespread use of mobile technologies, remote sensing services and computing tools make it much easier for the farmers to access relevant information, inputs, markets, supply chains, higher productivity, besides reduction in operational costs, which invariably result in greater income. The Union Budget 2022-23 outlined a clear policy vision for delivery of digital and hi-tech services to farmers with involvement of public sector research and extension institutions along with private agri-tech player and stakeholders of agri-value chains.
‘Digital Agriculture Mission’ is yet to be finalized. However, a number of activities and initiatives are already on. A high level task force is in the process of finalizing India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA) report. Based on the views of subject experts, farmers, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) and general public, the concerned department is in the process of finalizing a framework for creating ‘Agristack’ in the country, which will serve as a foundation to build innovative agri-focused solutions leveraging digital technologies to contribute effectively towards increasing the income of farmers and improve efficiency of the agriculture sector.
To give momentum to this process of digital agriculture, leading technology, agri-tech, start-ups have been invited to collaborate with the Government of India and develop Proof of Concepts (PoC) based on data of select districts and villages. Companies were invited to sign MoU on purely pro bono basis and develop the PoCs, which will help in understanding the uses of Agristack and service & solutions that can be built using available data. If found beneficial to the farmers, it would be scaled up at national level. Under National e-Governance Plan in agriculture, funds are released to the states and union territories for the projects involving use of modern technologies such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, block chain technology, internet of things, robotics among others.
Various mobile applications including KisanSuvidha have also been developed to facilitate dissemination of information to farmers on the critical parameters like weather, market prices, plant protection, agro-advisory, extreme weather alerts, input dealers of seed, pesticide, fertilizer, farm machinery, soil health card, cold storage & godowns, soil testing laboratories, veterinary centre, diagnostic labs, crop insurance premium calculator and the government schemes. And all stakeholders like state governments, state agriculture universities, ICAR, agritech start-ups, agri industry, banks, think tank, civil society, and farmer organizations have been involved in the process. Clearly, digital doesn’t remain to be just a fashionable word meant for technologists, now it is also empowering millions of farmers.
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