When the word digitization is involved in agriculture, it also involves the services of AI to interpret information. Then based on this information, it offers precise recommendations to improve both the harvest quantity as well as quality. Furthermore, digitization of agriculture enables producers to make choices related to the best choices of crops to cultivate based on the region and weather while also calculating the most efficient uses of farm-related machinery.
All such devices along with various satellites provide intimate weather-related information which makes producers easily monitor crop growth in real-time along with plot performance as well as forecasting the output with high levels of accuracy.
All of such factors contribute to the overall increased efficiency and productivity along with better decision-making, and better market linkage for farmers.
Digitization Is Carried Out in a Variety of Ways
After a thorough study, the Indian government concluded that modernizing the agricultural sector was very much essential. Through different initiatives as well as with the support of multiple companies and private investors, India aims to implement large-scale digitization of the agriculture sector by the year 2025. Additionally, Invest India has further highlighted many key plans and events that are taking forward India’s digital agriculture growth:
- In September 2021, the Indian government initiated the Digital Agriculture Mission 2021-2025. As per this mission, five memoranda of understanding (MoUs) were signed, all of which were aimed at promoting digital agriculture projects within India.
- Different pilot projects with many companies such as Cisco, ITC, Jio Platforms, and Ninjacart in cooperation with government-related branches like the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) and the National e-Markets Limited (NeML) were announced. The main aim is to enable the modernization of agriculture through various technologies such as blockchain and AI.
- NITI Aayog which is a public policy creator for the Government of India, in partnership with IBM aims at developing a crop production forecast model which will be powered by AI. This model is believed to increase the yields, monitor the quality of soil as well as offer early detection along with warnings for disease outbreaks.
- Cisco also developed an Agricultural Digital Infrastructure (ADI) aimed at improving farming quality along with providing agriculture-related information. This infrastructure was used by the Department of Agriculture under the National Agri Stack for the collection and evaluation of data.
- A brand new platform named Jio Agri (Jio Krishi) was unveiled in February 2020. This platform digitalized the agricultural ecosystem as well as the value chain to offer convenience to farmers. It uses various information sources and uses AI-based algorithms to interpret the data. The main goal of the platform is to offer accurate targeted advice to farmers to maximize their yield.
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