How NITI AAYOG’s Pact with IBM Will Increase Crop Yield for Farmers?

On Friday, IBM and NITI Aayog signed a pact to come up with a crop yield production model using artificial intelligence (AI) to guide farmers in Aspirational Districts to increase their productivity, an official statement said.

The partnership primarily aims to use technology to provide inputs to farmers in order to improve crop productivity, agricultural output, and overall yield with an umbrella goal of increasing farmer’s income.

10 Aspirational Districts in Assam, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh will be focused in the first phase of the project.

Growth of Agri-Startups and Their Indulgence in AI  

Agritech startups are much required ventures in Indian agricultural arena. Numerous startups like SatSure are impacting the Indian agricultural economy in many ways. For example, another agri startup, Intello Labs uses image-recognition software to monitor crops and predict the yield of farms.

Aibono uses artificial intelligence (AI) and agri-data science to provide solutions to maximize farm yields. Trithi Robotics uses drone technology to allow farmers to monitor crops in real time and provide precise analyses of their soil and seeds. SatSure’s website says, “the company makes sense of disparate operational and agronomic data to simplify complex decisions related to crop risk management and for making agriculture predictable and profitable.”

The Future Ahead

Pankaj Rai, senior vice-president for strategy at Wells Fargo Enterprise Global Services, believes that while agritech and AI can help cure some of the problems afflicting Indian agriculture, many challenges remain. “There is a steady decrease in land under cultivation when compared to the needs of the country’s growing population. The lack of mechanisation and continued dependence on middlemen post-harvest are becoming hurdles for AI to completely penetrate the sector,” said Pankaj Rai in a recent event.