Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is advancing quickly.
Large-scale farmers in the developed world are already using AI-enabled sensors and other tools to monitor their crops’ progress. Smallholder farmers stand to benefit as well. Government officials in India are determined to ensure that their nation’s farmers benefit from AI technologies, so they’ve partnered with the people behind the annual Davos conference to put together a guidebook for using AI on India’s smallholder farms.
In partnership with India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the World Economic Forum has published a new insight report titled “Future Farming in India: A Playbook for Scaling Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture.”
More than just an overview of different ways that AI can be used to grow more food, the new playbook offers step-by-step guidelines for introducing AI to India’s farms with specific goals in mind. It’s a call to action and an instruction manual at the same time.
What is AI?
It’s probably a good idea to first understand what modern AI technology is and what it can and cannot do.
In science fiction, artificial intelligence implies machines that can think like humans do. In the real world, AI systems are complex software applications that can process massive quantities of data in very short amounts of time. After receiving prompts, AI systems access and scan massive databases—in most cases, the internet—and return responses and insights that mimic human-written language or speech. In other cases, AI powers machines in ways that enable them to take actions based on real-time data received from whatever sensors they are connected to. The most used AI systems are the popular chatbots that are beginning to overtake internet search engines. AI can also be used to power robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, and much more.
What AI can’t do is acquire or process new information independently.
I asked one popular AI-powered chatbot if the sum of knowledge it contained was confined entirely to what’s available on the internet, and to its credit, the machine acknowledged that this is so. “I do not have eyes or ears,” it told me, meaning if a world leader falls from power or a volcano erupts somewhere, an AI chatbot would have no idea such world-turning events were happening without humans telling it. For autonomous vehicles collecting data through cameras, an AI “mind” behind the device can only process data and issue responses according to algorithms pre-programmed by people.
But these limitations don’t make AI technology any less impressive.
“Artificial intelligence (AI) stands out as a transformative force, capable of revolutionizing agricultural practices, enhancing productivity, and ensuring sustainability,” as the new Indian government-WEF report points out.
“Enhancing AI capacity among 200,000 agricultural extension officers supporting 700,000 villages is essential and pivotal.”
The playbook
The new guide for how India should harness AI begins by recognizing the greatest challenges facing India’s farmers.
It notes the threats climate change poses to farming. Other challenges are holdovers from India’s agricultural history. Though the country stood at the center of the Green Revolution, its farms are still less productive compared to farms in other nations. Another concern of the authors is India’s “fragmented land holdings” that complicate farming. Smallholder farmers also don’t have access to the same bank loans and other financing that large-scale farmers do, and a majority of India’s farmers are smallholders.
As the playbook goes on to explain in detail, AI can be used to help farmers overcome all four of these challenges and others.
For example, the playbook lays out how AI can be used for crop planning on a national scale.
First, government, agriculture experts, and farmers would need to develop a strategy and then begin collecting data. Then, the authors say, technical expertise would come in to develop a computerized “AI crop-planning model” capable of processing huge datasets to issue competent recommendations on where to plant certain types of crops at different times of year based on what’s known about the local conditions, information uploaded to the AI model.
From there, region-specific crop planning proposals would be generated and farmers could decide whether to use them. Meanwhile, computer wizards would work continuously to improve the system while data collection experts kept the AI informed of the latest localized farming conditions.
This would be a huge improvement over the status quo, the playbook argues.
“In India, crop planning is typically reactive and driven by last season’s prices at an individual farm level, often resulting in cycles of gluts and shortages,” the authors wrote. “In contrast, AI-enabled crop planning uses a wide range of farm and non-farm data—such as soil health, weather patterns, historical prices, and food import/export trends—to recommend optimal crops for farmers in various regions.”
The paper goes on to lay out similar game plans for using AI to help keep track of soil conditions in real time, for controlling pests and crop diseases, and for creating so-called “smart marketplaces” where greater pricing transparency could help boost farmers’ incomes.
Screenshot showing a portion of the cover of the new Indian government—WEF AI in agriculture playbook.
Enable, create, deliver
The playbook proposes that India adopt an Inclusive Multistakeholder Pathway for the Accelerated Convergence of AI Technologies, or the IMPACT AI framework.
An AI-powered smallholder farming revolution won’t happen in India spontaneously. It will take the right set of public and private policies and incentives to lay the groundwork for scaling AI innovation across the country. That’s where the IMPACT AI framework comes in.
The authors recognize that AI is no panacea and in many cases it’s likely being overhyped. At the same time, calls for government regulation could stifle its potential success too early. Thus, they see the IMPACT AI framework as a wise middle-of-the-road approach, one supported by three strategic pillars: Enable, Create, and Deliver.
An enabling pillar “creates an environment conducive to the innovation of AI solutions and their deployment at scale” at a state or national level.
Building an enabling environment will require cooperation between the government and the private sector. Data exchanges and sharing policies will need to be created, and financing systems will be required to help fund research and development of AI tools for agriculture.
Pillar 2, Create, refers to the startup culture that India must encourage to drive AI systems development and innovation forward. These companies will require “sandboxes” where they can be encouraged to test out innovations and ideas, all occurring under appropriate government oversight to ensure that the systems that do emerge are beneficial to humans, and not harmful. The playbook anticipates pilot projects becoming essential features of Pillar 2.
Pillar 3, Deliver, means guaranteeing that new AI innovations to improve smallholder farmers’ lives “reach the last mile—securely, efficiently, and inclusively.” The playbook proposes achieving this mainly through agricultural extension services. “Enhancing AI capacity among 200,000 agricultural extension officers supporting 700,000 villages is essential and pivotal,” the authors wrote.
Innovations could be delivered to the farmers in other ways and sustained through call centers or online portals in cases where smallholders have access to the internet.
Published only this year, the playbook is just a guide pointing to a possible path forward. It remains to be seen whether this guidebook for integrating AI into India’s smallholder agriculture leads to any lasting real-world impact.
“This playbook is intended to serve as a practical guide and as an instrument that various stakeholders can use to unlock transformative benefits,” as the document explains. That’s it.
It’s up to the Indian governments, academia, and industry to transform the report’s recommendations into action, should they choose to do so. — Grow Further
Photo credit: A farm worker harvesting tea in Assam, India. Diganta Talukdar, Flickr and Creative Commons (CC Attribution 2.0 Generic).