Government And IBM India Are Testing AI & Weather Tech In Agriculture

On July 03, the Centre partnered with IBM India to conduct a pilot study concerning the use of weather technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) into agriculture in three districts of the three states including Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh.

This pilot study will be implemented for the Kharif cropping season of this year in the following districts: Nanded, Rajkot, and Bhopal.

According to the official statement, the Watson Decision Platform of IBM will offer solutions to apply weather technology and AI into agriculture in India at farm level or village level.

More particularly, they will provide some certain kinds of information such as soil moisture or weather forecast, which must help Indian farmers to make necessary decisions concerning the management of crops and water. Their main purpose is to ensure Indians can reach higher productivity and better production.

The signing ceremony of the SoI (statement of intent) was conducted with the participation of the Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Narendra Singh Tomar and junior Agriculture Minister Kailash Choudhary, and many other senior officials.

According to the Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Tomar,

This move is considered as the government’s promise to leverage digital technologies that aim at the increase of farmers’ income, as well as the transformation of Indian agriculture.

In addition, the Indian government and IBM plan to deploy Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture to collect village-level soil moisture and farm-level weather forecast in all of the above three districts in Western and Central India.