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New Delhi: Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. Tech giants are among the technology giants set to use data from India’s farmers in an ambitious government-led productivity drive aimed at transforming an age-old agriculture industry.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, which is seeking to ensure food security in the world’s second most populous country, has signed preliminary agreements with three US titans and several local businesses starting in April That is to share the agriculture data being collected since coming to power. in 2014. Modi is betting that the private sector can help farmers increase yields with apps and tools built from information such as crop production, soil quality and land holdings.
Jio Platforms Ltd., Reliance Industries Ltd. of billionaire Mukesh Ambani. Enterprise controlled by, and tobacco giant ITC Ltd. Local powerhouses are among those who have signed up for the program, the government said this week.
With the project, Modi seeks to usher in long-running reforms to create a more than Rs 48,800-crore agriculture sector, which employs nearly half of the country’s 1.3 billion people and accounts for nearly half of Asia’s third-largest economy. 18% share. The government is counting on the project’s success to boost rural incomes, cut imports, reduce some of the world’s worst food wastage with better infrastructure, and eventually compete with exporters such as Brazil, the US and the European Union. .
For global firms, it is a setback for India’s agri-tech industry, which Ernst & Young estimates has the potential to reach around Rs 2,400 crore in revenue by 2025, with current penetration of only 1%. It is also an opportunity to deploy networks, artificial intelligence and machine learning in a developing country, while for e-commerce firms like Amazon and Reliance, securing a steady stream of farm produce can help crack the grocery market. which accounts for more than half. 1 lakh crore Rs. in annual retail spending by Indians.
Ankur Pahwa, Partner, Consultancy EY India said, “It is a high impact industry and private players are realizing this opportunity and want to be a big part of it.” “There is a huge amount of food wastage in India due to lack of technology and infrastructure. So there is a huge turnaround for the program. “
The idea is simple: seed all the information like crop patterns, soil health, insurance, credit and weather patterns into a database and then analyze it through AI and data analytics. Then the goal is to develop personalized services for an area that is fraught with challenges such as optimum yields, water scarcity, depleted soil and lack of infrastructure including temperature-controlled warehouses and refrigerated trucks.
Under the agreement, big tech companies help the government develop proof of concepts to offer tech solutions for farm-to-fork services, which farmers will be able to access at their doorstep. If there is profit, firms will be able to sell the final product to the government and directly to producers and the solutions will be scaled up nationally.
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So far, the government has seeded publicly available data for more than 50 million farmers out of the 120 million land-holder producers that have been identified. Local companies that have signed up include Star AgriBazaar Technologies, ESRI India Technologies, Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Organic Research Institute and Ninjakart.
“A database would be useful for a variety of purposes – agri-marketing, subsidies targeting” and much more, said Sanjay Mathur, chief economist for ASEAN and India at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. Structure for the rural area. “
But success is far from guaranteed. The plan to join the big corporations has already drawn fire from critics, who say the move is another attempt by the government to give a bigger influence to the private sector, a development that could hurt small and vulnerable farmers. Is.
The program could add even more to the long-running protests that Modi’s government has been struggling to deal with for more than nine months after some farmers were incensed by controversial new agriculture laws. With crucial state elections due in 2022, the technology-to-assisted-farming concept may find it difficult to sell to the farming community already skeptical of the government’s intentions.
Sukhwinder Singh Sabra, a farmer from the northern state of Punjab, said, “With this data they would know where the produce was not good, and would buy cheap from the farmers there and sell it at higher prices elsewhere.” November against the new agricultural laws. “The consumers will suffer more than the farmers.”
Apeksha Kaushik, principal analyst at Gartner, said the adoption of the technology in India is still in its early stages. “Limited availability of technology infrastructure and recurring natural events like floods, droughts have also acted against the deployment of digital solutions,” he said.
Concerns over data privacy
Concerns over data privacy could be another challenge. Farmer leader Abhimanyu Kohar, 27, who has been supporting the protesting farmers, said it was a “serious issue”. “We all know the government’s record in keeping data secure,” he said.
Despite the odds, some one-year free pilot programs are already underway.
Microsoft has selected 100 villages to implement and build a platform for AI and Machine Learning. Amazon, which has already started providing real-time advice and information to farmers through a mobile app, is offering cloud services to solution providers. Representatives for the India offices of Microsoft and Amazon did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Star AgriBazaar, whose co-founder Amit Mundawala calls the project a “game changer”, will collect data on agricultural land profiling, crop estimation, soil degradation and weather patterns. According to Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, ESRI India is using Geographic Information System to generate the data and build the application.
PK Joshi, former director of South Asia at the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, said, “Once you have the data, you can connect with the ground reality and improve your projections, make informed decisions and Let us see which areas need policy intervention.” .
State Additional Chief Secretary Rajiv Chawla said a similar data-driven system, implemented in the southern state of Karnataka last year, helped increase efficiency in the distribution of government benefits. He said some bank loans have also been given to farmers using centralized data, and all government programmes, through verification and minimum support price mechanisms for insurance and loans, have been done to plug leakages and eliminate frauds. going, he said.
Apart from tech giants, several smaller companies and startups are likely to join the programme. According to the government’s consultation paper on digital agriculture, when the project is completed, it will enable farmers to realize better profitability with access to the right information at the right time, and to facilitate better planning and execution of policies. Agriculture will become the core of the ecosystem.
“How this exercise will translate into action or lead to higher production and farm income remains to be seen,” said Madan Sabnavis, Chief Economist, Care Ratings Ltd.bloomberg
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