Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Shri Ramnath Thakur, in a written reply in Lok Sabha, informed about the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods and IoT-enabled systems to improve crop productivity.
The government has employed Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods and IoT-enabled systems to improve crop productivity, sustainability and farmer livelihoods and to address various challenges in the agricultural sector to aid farmers etc. Some initiatives including Kisan e-Mitra are given below:
‘Kisan e-Mitra’, is a voice-based AI-powered chatbot, developed to assist farmers with responses to their queries on PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme. This solution supports 11 regional languages and is evolving to assist with other government programs. At present, it handles over 20,000 farmer queries daily and so far, more than 92 lakh queries have been answered.
The National Pest Surveillance System, for tackling the loss of produce due to climate change, utilizes AI and Machine Learning to detect pest infestation in crop issues, enabling timely intervention for healthier crops. This tool, currently used by over 10,000 extension workers, allows farmers to capture images of pests to help them mitigate pest attacks and reduce crop losses. At present, it currently supports 61 crops and over 400 pests.
AI-based analytics using field photographs for satellite-based crop mapping being used in Crop-weather matching monitoring of crops sown.
