Tech Based Aid for Farmers in India

Tech Based Aid for Farmers in India

June 23, 2022

Agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy and therefore the problems faced by this industry have been crucial topics of discussion. The uncertain nature of this industry results from a number of reasons including:

  • Poor infrastructure & farming techniques, low use of farm technologies etc,
    ultimately resulting in low productivity. Consequently, the emergence of digital agriculture- a term used to refer to the use of digital technologies in managing the business of agriculture- is proving to be a boon for farmers today.

Some of these initiatives in India include:

  • The initiation of the Digital Agriculture Mission 2021–2025, by the Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, which aims to support and accelerate projects based on new technologies, like AI, block chain, remote sensing and GIS technology and use of drones and robots.
  • Sites such as eNam- National Agriculture Market, DBT- Direct Benefit Transfer Central Agri Portal, eChoupal-kiosks located in villages for access to the internet, have been developed to promote the use of technology among farmers.
  • AgriStack – a collection of technology-based interventions in agriculture, United Farmer Service Platfrom (UFSP), Esagu and Agrisnet are among some of the other famous platforms based on e-technology.
  • Further, the Jio Krishi Platform launched in February 2020 helps digitise the agricultural ecosystem along the entire value chain to empower farmers; The platform uses stand-alone application data to provide advisory, the advanced functions use data from various sources, feed the data into AI/ML algorithms and provide accurate personalised advice.

As a company committed to combine traditional agri knowledge with transparent credit and tech-driven insights to help farmers, with a similar goal of adding value along the entire value chain, Agriwise’s new platform, Fininza (fininza.in/) utilises some of these newer technological advancements. The platform works to smoothen the lending process and provide access to all loan details under one roof.

“Technology can make farmers’ lives easier, predictable and profitable, and increase food production”, said Ram Kaundinya, director general, Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII). Today, the world is witnessing technological advancements at a rate faster than ever. Big data, Artificial intelligence, Deep learning etc are some of the tools that can be utilise to the advantage of farmers and pave way for economic prosperity in the country as a whole.

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