According to experts and recent statistics, millions of farmers around India are unable to adopt contemporary farming practices and technology due to a substantial knowledge gap in the agricultural industry, which employs roughly 65% of the country’s workforce.
Insufficient communication routes, inadequate funding for extension services, and a gap between farming communities and research institutions have hindered the spread of novel agricultural insights, particularly in isolated rural regions.
According to Ramesh Kumar, an agricultural economist at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), “there are wide knowledge gaps among Indian farmers regarding organic farming methods, climate-resilient agriculture practices, precision agriculture techniques, and even basic good agricultural practices like safe pesticide usage.”
There is a knowledge gap in several areas that are essential to raising agricultural sustainability and productivity. In order to facilitate the successful implementation of sustainable agriculture practices across the country, for example, the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water (CEEW) highlighted in a report from 2021 the necessity of strong knowledge-sharing and capacity-building initiatives.
Experts caution that in order for India to reach sustainability targets, increase farmer livelihoods, and strengthen food security, it will be imperative to close this knowledge gap.
Gen AI Comes to the Aid
Reliance Jio and Microsoft-backed With its multilingual AI farm helper, KissanAI is leading the way in efforts to close the knowledge gap. Farmers all around India can access the portal, which provides tailored voice-based support in different Indian languages. In a society where disparate languages and dialects frequently obstruct the transmission of vital agricultural knowledge, this project is essential.
This project is essential to closing the knowledge gap in the industry by converting conventional agricultural knowledge into formats that farmers can easily understand, particularly in their mother tongues.
“We aim to bring online, convert into AI, and make accessible a wealth of knowledge that is traditionally stored in pen-and-paper format, drawings, or manuals,” Desai continued.
The first agricultural LLM in India, Dhenu 1.0, was just released by KissanAI. The distinctive feature of Dhenu is its customized approach to Indian agriculture. Unlike generic LLMs, the bilingual model can process 300,000 instruction sets in Hindi and English, each incorporating information on local methodologies and Indian agricultural practices.
Using Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, Jugalbandi, an AI chatbot, is helping farmers and villagers in rural India get information about several government programs that can help them. Jugalbandi is driven by OpenAI’s GPT models. The chatbot may be accessed over WhatsApp and gets pertinent program facts that are usually published in English. It then provides the user with the information in their native language, choosing from ten of the 22 official Indian languages.
Similar to this, Wadhwani AI, a nonprofit organization devoted to creating AI solutions for social benefit, is investigating the possibility of using generative AI to run contact centers for Kissan farmers. According to Alpan Raval, head scientist for AI/ML at Wadhwani AI, generative AI is being used to create a Kissan call center assistance system that will help farmers with their inquiries.
Their method entails using models to generate automatic responses based on a knowledge base compiled from recent government reports and papers, supplementing the knowledge of human specialists with conversational AI interactions made possible by a voice interface.
The capabilities of generative AI are also being used by other industry participants. The generative AI firm Gooey and the international development organization Digital Green have teamed.AI to present Farmer.CHAT, a cutting-edge technology designed to help farmers overcome obstacles associated with water security and climate change.
Ama KrushAI was also introduced by the Department of Agriculture and Farmer’s Empowerment in Odisha. With the help of this interactive chatbot, farmers may receive insightful advice on the best ways to manage their crops, government programs, and loan options from more than 40 commercial and cooperative banks.
What Are Already-Facing Agritech Startups?
AI is used by other businesses, such as Intello Labs, Cropin, Fasal, and DeHaat, to give farmers real-time insights about crop health, market prices, and supply chain management. This information enables farmers to make more educated decisions, enhance crop quality, and boost their revenue.
These organizations have been firmly established in the agricultural ecosystem for a considerable amount of time, and they have curated data sets and domain-specific expertise. Their potential could be greatly increased when paired with the current rapid breakthroughs in genAI technologies.
At the moment, Cropin and Fasal are revolutionizing resource management and precision farming with their AI-driven solutions.
With the goal to provide predictive insights for many elements of farming, such as crop detection, yield calculation, irrigation scheduling, and pest and disease prediction, Cropin offers a suite of 22 AI models. Conversely, Fasal employs sensors on the farm to track micro and macroclimatic conditions and provides actionable advice according to the farm, crop, and stage of the crop.
Moreover, businesses like Iron Ox develop fully autonomous greenhouses with robots and artificial intelligence (AI), where every element of the plants’ surroundings is optimized and regulated.
The use of generative AI technology is expanding rapidly in the Indian agriculture sector. The integration of generative AI capabilities, domain expertise, and localized data has the potential to transform the distribution of agricultural information and facilitate sustainable practices.
