Rajavelu N.K, CEO – Crop Protection Business, Godrej Agrovet in a recent interaction with Mary Janifha Evangeline X, Editor, Asia Manufacturing Review magazine, shared his views on How AI-powered advisory platforms help farmers make better decisions, the specific challenges these tools address in terms of productivity, benefits of integrating mobile apps into daily farming practises and how do these tools empower farmers in yield optimisation making and more.
How do AI-powered advisory platforms help farmers make better decisions and what specific challenges do these tools address in terms of productivity?
AI-enabled advisory platforms employ real-time data to help the farmers make decisions through machine learning and predictive analytics. Weather variability is perhaps the greatest challenge, but with various AI models, farmers can predict the weather and plan their agricultural work accordingly to such variable parameters. Soil health management remains the second most important factor.
Every farmer has to understand his soil and what he can do to make sure that the soil nourishes the crops he grows well. Those would be possible things to study. And the third factor is pest and disease control. It will be very important since AI, through predictive analytics and weather parameters, will be able to substantially predict pest and disease infestations before they become visible in the field.
And lastly, it is yield optimization-and AI-enhanced insights assist in strategies concerning the population of seedlings per acre, irrigation such as when and how much they irrigate to maximize yield, and nutrient management that ultimately leads to increases in productivity.
What are the benefits of integrating mobile apps into daily farming practises and how do these tools empower farmers in yield optimisation making?
The major difference is that, with the power of the internet today, farmers are using several mobile apps to take decisions: it is now in their hands, as various devices to take decisions other than field visits were not applicable before five years with less or no information on cost-loss concerns, and this is huge in impact.
There is a lot of facilities that various mobile apps offer. Some of the names I could mention are instant access information. They get all the weather updates and some of the new apps discuss the weather forecast for the next seven days, which helps them to plan their activities like labour management, availability of labour, etc.
The second factor is precision farming support. People who have these apps on their mobile can input data, monitor their soil health, and, along with that, monitor the nutrient management in their soil. There is also a good availability of that kind of information nowadays on various apps.
Also, for supply chain efficiency, farmers can track the goods they sell or buy. The real-time data availability on logistics has helped them better plan. Finally, several bank financial-management functions and government insurance schemes assist farmers with financial decision-making and with managing their finances.
How does the use of mobile apps in agriculture influence the supply chain and what role do they play in improving market access for farmers? Also, can precision farming reduce the environmental impact of agriculture by simultaneously boosting productivity?
It has become a question of prime importance for the supply chain of the farmers to be optimized because now, with having the real-time price data, the information asymmetry which is happen can be reduced to great extent. They can cut out the middleman and have good deals by having this information directly with them. The second aspect has to do their logistics, such as sometimes storing of produce in cold storage and the thought of when to sell them, while supply chain management gets their product to the right place at the right time so that they can get maximum prices for their produce.
Also, these are some replaced manufacturers who contact suppliers through digital means such that they know exactly they had a better deal through direct talking to the digital buyers, therefore that is helping them to realize deals in terms of supplying their deal chain. Coming to the precision farming, it really is a rapidly picking-up concept, but really some farmers started to use it and are really gaining a lot of benefits most especially in the areas of input waste; in terms of how much fertilizer should be made use of, chemicals, pesticides, and so on. There are substantial sizeable input wastes becoming one of the most important utility tools in precision farming tools through improving water use efficiency and enhancing soil health; also, some farmers have begun thinking in terms of carbon footprint.
The aspect, to put simply, relates to efforts made in lowering carbon footprint. Many large farms and progressive farmers are now actually going into this. Interestingly, some farmers started approaching us about how to obtain carbon credits. These are some of the things that really help them in precision farming, along with supplements in productivity.
What are the barriers to adopting AI-powered advisory platforms and precision farming technologies in rural or underserved farming communities? How do digital tools promote better resource management in agriculture, specifically in terms of water usage and fertiliser applications?
Starting with the key challenges, over the last five years, there has been a revolution of various changes owing to the internet and mobile devices, which are comparatively easy to access nowadays. However, there are still barriers in several areas, especially now when digital tools or AI-enabled advisory platforms are becoming too costly. With time, of course, once when there's some competition, this cost has got to start coming down; already we are witnessing this very competently in the global arena, in how well AI or artificial intelligence is gaining momentum, and it is logically going to become very cost-competitive. The second thing is the lack of digital literacy to the farmers. I have a tool, but are we able to communicate in the local language and help them understand how these AI-powered tools can really help them? That's something that digital literacy has to improve. To some extent, I would say most of the areas have had good internet connectivity, but I'm sure there are still many areas where internet connectivity can help make these AI-based tools more effective.
But one of the barriers could be the trust factor, as the farmers would see those AI-based tools, and they believe what they see; word of mouth and peer farmers are way strong, , those trust issues are not there, but here probably as the system progresses and as the technology advances, the trust issues should also get addressed as well. Coming to your next question, especially on the water management and fertiliser optimisation, how the digital tools can promote.
As I said earlier, a lot of information can be available, made available through this artificial intelligence, and then we can reduce the wastage of water. Typically, for example, how often should I irrigate my field in terms of x number of days? Most of the time, however, I have water and I'm irrigating my vegetable patch, without properly reckoning if I will make good use of it subsequently. In this aspect, water management acquires a critical function and extremely important resource.
Now, if you compare North India with Central India or South India when talking about the cultivation of rice or paddy, the government is zealously promoting conserving water in agriculture and ensuring the use of direct seeded rice. The point is for the farmer to be educated that water management is very, very critical, and now the AI power tool is actually helping in that. The fertiliser optimisation. There are lots of development products for fertilisers, ranging from straight fertilisers to nano-fertilisers, great things coming in.
My guess is that fertiliser optimisation for soil health and nutrient content can be done very efficiently using AI tools that would be a big hand in getting it done.
What role do digital tools play in fostering collaboration between farmers, agronomists, researchers or even agribusinesses for more effective farming practises?
According to me, the cooperation between farmers, agronomists, researchers, that was and still is growing, also the one between private entities like us, agribusiness firms, has even increased thanks to knowledge sharing in social media, which drives lots of things to happen. So, in my opinion, digital tools will play an important role in aiding collaboration.
Furthermore, another would be data-driven research in which the crowdsourced agricultural data can be really handy in improving predictive models and then farming techniques. And market linkages, one important one here being, as I feel, to provide some inputs for collaboration where these digital platforms could coordinate with farmers, let it be during contract farming or bulk purchasing. So, these are what I consider digital tools collaborated to support. One would be knowledge sharing; through mobile platforms, they would connect the farmers with various agronomists, researchers, and also private companies. There are consultants for special crops who come through during real-time cause-solving. For me, it is knowledge sharing as the first one.