By AFP - Agence France Presse
AI begins to help India's struggling farms
Aishwarya KUMAR
Every morning, Indian farmer R Murali opens an app on his phone to check whether his pomegranate trees need water or fertilizer or are at risk from pests.
“It's a routine,” Murali, 51, told AFP at his farm in the southern state of Karnataka. “It's like praying to God every day.”
Much of India's vast agricultural economy - which employs more than 45 percent of the workforce - remains deeply traditional, beset by problems exacerbated by extreme weather conditions driven by climate change.
Murali is one of a growing number of producers in the world's most populous nation who have adopted tools powered by artificial intelligence, which he says helps him farm “more efficiently and effectively”.
“The app is the first thing I check as soon as I wake up,” said Murali, whose farm is planted with sensors that provide constant updates on soil moisture, nutrient levels, and weather forecasts at farm level.
He says the AI system developed by tech startup Fasal, which details when and how much water, fertilizer, and pesticide is needed, has cut costs by a fifth without reducing productivity.
“What we have built is a technology that allows plantations to talk to their farmers,” said Ananda Verma, one of the founders of Fasal, which serves around 12,000 farmers.
Verma, 35, who started developing the system in 2017 to understand soil moisture as a do-it-yourself project for his father's farm, called it a tool “to make better decisions”.
- High cost
But Fasal's products cost between $57 and $287 to install.
That's a high price in a country where the average monthly income of farmers is $117 and where more than 85% of farms are smaller than two hectares (five acres), according to government data.
“We have the technology, but the availability of venture capital in India is limited,” said Verma.
New Delhi says it is determined to develop low-cost, domestic AI, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will co-host an AI summit in France on Monday.
Agriculture, which accounts for around 15% of India's economy, is an area ripe for its application. Farms urgently need investment and modernization.
Water shortages, floods, and increasingly unstable weather, as well as debts, have taken a heavy toll on a sector that employs around two-thirds of India's 1.4 billion inhabitants.
India is already home to more than 450 agritech startups, with the projected valuation of the sector at $24 billion, according to a 2023 report by government think tank NITI Aayog.
But the report also warned that a lack of digital literacy often resulted in low adoption of agritech solutions.
- Agitation
Among these companies is Niqo Robotics, which has developed a system that uses AI cameras attached to chemical spraying machines.
The tractor-equipped sprayers assess each plant to deliver the optimum amount of chemicals, reducing input costs and limiting environmental damage, says the company.
Niqo claims that its users in the states of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh have reduced their spending on chemicals by up to 90%.
At another start-up, BeePrecise, Rishina Kuruvilla is part of the team that has developed AI monitors that measure the health of beehives.
This includes humidity, temperature, and even the sound of the bees - a way of tracking the queen bee's activities.
Kuruvilla said the tool has helped beekeepers harvest honey that is “a bit more organic and better for consumption”.
- Help from the state
But although AI technology is flourishing, uptake among farmers is slow because many can't afford it.
Agricultural economist RS Deshpande, a visiting professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Change in Bengaluru, says the government should bear the costs.
Many farmers “are surviving” only because they eat what they grow, he said.
“Since they own a farm, they take the farm produce home,” he said. “If the government is ready, India will be ready.”
ash/pjm/stu/lb
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