CIOInsider India Magazine

The traditional forms of agriculture practiced by farmers in India for ages will soon be a thing of the past as the New Delhi government has signed a pact with the US tech giants to give the country’s agriculture a new digital makeover. On the international side are Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., and Cisco Systems Inc., and on the national side Reliance Industries’ io Platforms Ltd., and tobacco giant ITC Ltd., are harvesting data from the farmers that is taken as food for thought to determine areas that could use a bit of technological intervention.

Since India being the second most populous nation in the world, its Prime Minister Narendra Modi is looking to ensure food security. The government believes that private sectors can assist farmers to harvest more yield through apps and tools built from information such as crop output, soil quality and land holdings.

Given how far this ship sails, the government is hoping to implement lengthy reforms in the farm sector, which employs nearly half of the country's 1.3 billion people and accounts for about a fifth of Asia's third-largest economy. With greater infrastructure, the government hopes to boost rural incomes, cut imports, minimize some of the world's worst food wastes, and eventually compete with exporters such as Brazil, the United States, and the European Union.

Big Techs Think Door Delivery Services
The way home delivery has taken rise, big techs are thinking on the same lines as well. Meaning, they plan on helping the government develop proof of concepts for agriculture services that will be delivered right at the farmer’s doorstep. Seeing how far this succeeds, the big techs are thinking of selling their products to the government and growers and take it to a national level from there.

How this works is explained by Ankur Pahwa, a partner at consultancy EY India, who says that information such as crop pattern, soil health, insurance, credit, and weather patterns need to be fed into one database. This database must then be examined through AI and data analytics. As a result, this helps to develop personalized services for the agriculture sector is often down with challenges like peaking yields, water stress, degrading soil and lack of infrastructure including temperature-controlled warehouses and refrigerated trucks.

Having technological interference could indeed help complete the picture, considering how the nation is viewed to have huge amounts of food wastes. It is also the reason why tech companies have seen this as an opportunity and are whisking efforts to be a major part of it, as this sector could showcase high impacts.

Currently, the government has ensured to showcase data publicly to more than 50 million farmers and some local companies up for the deal are Star Agribazaar Technology, ESRI India Technologies, yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Organic Research Institute and Ninjacart. Then there are Amazon and Microsoft which are digitally harvesting the sector in their own regard.

Farmer Enquires and Amazon Deciphers
The e-commerce giant has first set off with providing real-time advice and information to any questions posed by the farmers is answered through its app. These queries can range from decision-making on crops or learning how to deploy machine learning. This app will be their guide to simplifying the complex or voice out solutions for the same. It does so by sending out notifications and the app is also induced with Machine Learning algorithms that detect flaws in fruits and vegetables. If farmers wish to deliver to AmazonFresh centers, the app helps them sort, grade and pack those fruits and veggies.

The e-commerce giant has also introduced a program called Reactive and Proactive Corp. that equips farmers with smart technological devices and provides insights like the app as well.

Speaking of programs the e-commerce giant also has one for the North East part of India, by devising a program called the Spotlight North East program which aims to enhance the local economy, create jobs, and accelerate financial inclusion and women's empowerment in the eight states of the country's North East.

Then there’s Microsoft planning big with the Union Ministry of Agriculture.

Microsoft to Accelerate Farmers Getting Used to Using Digital Tools
Union Ministry of Agriculture and Microsoft India inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a pilot mission in a hundred villages of six states. Through this venture, the Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Rural Development, Panchayati Raj and Food Processing Industries Shri Narendra Singh Tomar feel that the Prime Minister’s concept of virtual agriculture is now taking shape.

The Prime Minister’s aim is to emphasize the usage of contemporary-day technology in the farming sector, in a manner that farmers can get benefitted and beautify their profits through it. With the usage of generation farming may be a worthwhile challenge for the farmers and the brand new era will even get attracted toward agriculture.

Therefore, Microsoft has come ahead to begin a pilot program on a hundred villages in 10 districts of six states (Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh) to increase farmer interface for smart and advanced agriculture, such as post-harvest control and distribution. For this task, Microsoft has joined in with its nearby partner, CropData. In this regard, a MoU and tripartite settlement had been exchanged withinside the presence of Cabinet Minister Shri Tomar and the 2 Ministers of State. The task is for twelve months and each aspect inking the MoU will endure the price on their own. This task will perform diverse responsibilities for the betterment of farmers withinside the decided on a hundred villages, as a way to decorate their income. This task will lessen the enter fees for farmers and make farming easy. It is proposed to adopt comparable pilot initiatives with different public and personal gamers to create a colourful virtual agro-environment withinside the country.

The authorities aim to grow the earnings of farmers through disposing of the bottleneck of inconsistent information. A number of recent initiatives were released to achieve this goal. A primary initiative, in this regard, is the advent of Agri-Funds primarily based totally at the National Farmers Database. The authorities are making ready a farmer database through linking the land statistics of farmers throughout the country. The facts associated with PM Kisan, Soil Health Card and Pradhan Mantri Crop Insurance Scheme, to be had with the authorities, were included and the technique of inclusion of different facts goes on. Union Agriculture Minister Tomar has additionally issued directives for Geo tagging of all of the belongings on the way to be created through the distinctive feature of all schemes of the Ministry of Agriculture.