The AI and Sustainable Agriculture session shed insights and awareness on the critical juncture of our global agricultural system. As agriculture is the backbone of the global south, it accounts for almost 30% of GDP and 60% of employment. Therefore, overcoming challenges like climate change and the integration of AI in agriculture is a crucial step towards resilience and sustainability. The session unfolds the potential of AI in revolutionising sustainable agriculture with the keynote address of Dr. Yossi Matias.

Leveraging AI for Sustainable Agriculture

Agriculture is the largest source of livelihood in India, and the challenges faced by the farming community are vital issues to be addressed. Google, using AI, aims to organise and make available agricultural information at an individual farm field level to enable data-driven decision-making and delivery of services at the farmer level. They are deploying the method in a few ways, such as:

• Agricultural landscape understanding
• Agricultural monitoring and event detection
• AI language capabilities to address farmer’s adoption barriers.

Additionally, Matias announced the Pro Kissan App by collaborating with Protean, a one-stop shop for farmers in India. Another way by which Google is advancing sustainable agriculture is by supporting startups.

The panellists of the session included Dr. Yossi Matias, Vice President, Engineering & Research, Google; Dr. Vikram Adve, Professor, Dolad B. Gillies Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois; Dr. Manish Gupta, Director, Google Research India; Mr. Shekhar Subramanian, Chief Executive Officer, Wadhwani AI; Ms. Meghavi Prashnani, South Asia Lead, NASA Harvest; Ms. Shobhini Mukherjee, Executive Director, JPAL, South Asia regional centre and Rajnish Kumar, Chief Operating Officer & Director, Capacity Building & Finance of NeGD, Digital India Cooperation, Ministry of Electronics & IT moderated the session.

Challenges faced by farmers

Shobhini Mukherjee opined that, despite widespread AI adoption of best practices and tools nowadays, the barrier is the adoption itself. According to her, a few of the aspects which hinder the adoption of technology in agriculture are low digital literacy and lack of trust in technology.

Ensuring equal access

Dr. Vikram Adve said the adoption of digital technology has different levels. Following aspects like farmer collectives as a form to share the cost and risks of adopting technologies is one. when SMEs provide such services in the long run, they can reduce the barriers to adoption. The availability of government incentives is another strategy.

Key technological advancements

According to Ms. Meghavi Prashnani, the limits of satellite observation in waterbody mapping and soil degradation increase the significance of satellite data integration with IoT and others and gain the benefits of using an integrated system rather than satellite observation.

Skilling strategies

According to Mr. Shekhar Subramanian, involving individuals across the entire ecosystem is necessary. The solution should be effective and precise while upskilling. The major aspect is minimising the learning needed for the end user through effective systems design. Enabling voice-based strategies is another significant aspect.

AI use cases

Dr. Manish Gupta explores a few use cases of AI in agriculture. Using satellite imagery analysis, through usage patterns, they identify field boundaries. That is, they provide a unique identifier to every farm in the country. Another use case is that they enable farmers to access loans, reasonably priced insurance, etc.

Making AI-based solutions adaptable

 Dr Yossi Matias comments, “The impact is not by solving the problem but by people taking whatever solution you enable them and take action based on that in a useful way. Like any other product, we need to innovate solutions in an actionable and useful way. He added, “We should think about deploying products and technologies to make it easy for people to take the right action that will be helpful for them, the environment and the planet”.

The rapid increase in challenges like climate change demands the need for innovative solutions. Here, AI emerges as a tool and a transformative force to pursue sustainable agriculture and food security.