In order to boost agricultural output, farm mechanisation is essential. In India, mechanisation has been recognized as one of the most essential aspects of agricultural modernization, boosting agricultural output and consequently, rural prosperity.
Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers welfare signed 5 MOUs with private companies for taking forward Digital Agriculture. MOUs were signed for pilot projects with CISCO, Ninjacart, Jio Platforms Limited, ITC Limited and NCDEX e-Markets Limited (NeML).
These MoUs envisage the modernization of the Agriculture sector that will further aid in increasing the income of farmers.
Key Points
i.Farmers will be assisted in making informed decisions about sowing, seed variety, and best practises to maximise production through the pilot projects.
ii.Farmers can also make informed decisions about whether to sell or store their produce and when and where and what price to sell.
iii.The above MoUs are in line with the Central government’s Digital Agriculture Mission for 2021 -2025. It will fund projects based on new technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, remote sensing and GIS technology, and the use of drones and robots etc.
iv.MoA&FW is also developing a federated Farmers Database, which will be linked to land records of farmers across the country and a unique Farmer will be created.
v.This database will contain information about farmers, as well as benefits and assistance from several federal and state government schemes. This information can be accessible in the future to provide benefits to farmers. So far, the database is ready with details of around 5.5 crore farmers.
About the Pilot Projects
JIO Platforms Limited:
Jio through its agn platform “Jiokrishi” aids in digitizing the agro ecosystem and to empower
the farmers.
• Pilot Project- Jalna and Nashik districts of Maharashtra
ITC Limited:
It is engaged in agri business through one of its business divisions called Agri Business Division. ITC has earlier pioneered a unique internet-based initiative called the ‘eChoupal’ network. Now, it has proposed to build a Customized ‘Site Specific Crop Advisory’ service.
• Pilot Project – Sehore and Vidisha districts of Madhya Pradesh
CISCO
Cisco, along with industry partner Quantela, has developed Agriculture Digital Infrastructure (ADI) solution, which includes hardware and software components for better farming and knowledge sharing.
• Pilot Project– Kaithal (Haryana) and Morena (Madhya Pradesh).
NeML(NCDEX e-markets Limited)
It is the leading National Spot Exchange in India. It proposed a digital marketplace to aid in enhancing the livelihood of farmers and promote inclusive development in the agriculture sector in India.
• Pilot Project– Guntur (Andhra Pradesh), Devanagere (Karnataka) and Nasik (Maharashtra).
Ninjacart
63Ideas Infolabs Private Limited, operating under the brand name Ninjacart, is a technology based fresh produce supply Chain Company. It will develop and host the Agri Marketplace Platform (AMP), which will bring together all the participants in the linkage. t market
• Pilot Project- Chhindwara (Madhya Pradesh), Anand (Gujarat) and Indore (Madhya Pradesh).
About Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare
Narendra Singh Tomar Constituency- Morena, Madhya Pradesh),
Minister of State- Sushri Shobha Karandlaje (Udupi Chikmagalur, Karnataka), Kailash Choudhary (Barmer, Rajasthan).
Brief on all 05 MOU Partners
1. JIO
Jio and its Affiliates are in the business of providing digital and IT services and owns and controls the “JioKrishi” Platform. This platform provides services to create a data-driven farmer ecosystem, enabling analysis of farmers’ specific soil conditions and irrigation needs and connecting them to experts as well as educational videos.
Jio Agri Platform is built with the purpose of digitizing the agri ecosystem across the value chain to empower the farmers. It is designed to bring major participants of the Agri value chain on a common integrated platform and drive efficiencies in all agricultural activities and transactions, be it ‘in the farm’, ‘around the farm’, or ‘beyond the farm’.
The platform features have been divided into 2 categories i.e. basic and advanced. While basic features use stand-alone data on apps to provide advisory, the advanced features use data from different sources, powers AI/ML algorithms, and gives accurate personalized advisory.
2.ITC
Internet-based initiative called the “eChoupal” network (hereinafter called e-Choupal) helps in making various goods and services available in rural areas and for disseminating various crop advisory information to benefit farmers. ITC has been enhancing the versatility of e-Choupal with appropriate technological upgradation from time to time. Presently, ITC is in the process of developing e-Choupal in the form of a mobile application.
ITC has proposed to build a Customized ‘Site Specific Crop Advisory’ service with an objective to transform the conventional crop-level generic-advisory to a more customized site-specific crop advisory to the farmers using a digital crop monitoring platform, hosted on ITC’s e-Choupal 4.0 digital platform, supported by an on-ground handholding ecosystem.
3.CISCO
Cisco is shaping the future of the internet by continuously innovating and deploying constantly learning and adaptive technologies across Networking, Security, Collaboration, and the Cloud-building the platform for a Digital World. Cisco’s technology runs the internet of today and forms the backbone of internet infrastructure.
Proofs of Concept (POC) have been implemented in select districts in target states. Key information pertaining to insights on crop forecasting, weather patterns, plant disease patterns, soil quality, moisture content, etc are being gathered through the POC which are either completed or underway
The insights gathered under these POC’s by consolidating information from farms and farmers will play a critical role in the data pool to be created under the National Agri Stack by the Ministry of Agriculture. The POCs will also support creation of an innovative model of gathering insights from Cisco’s ADI and Smart Platform from other states.
4.NeML
It works with domain experts and offers trading platforms for trading in a host of commodities, both agricultural and non-agricultural to various market participants, primary producers including farmers, traders, processors etc. These trading platforms combine technological efficiency and market friendly trading features in a transparent atmosphere to make trading a rich and rewarding experience. With a national presence, the company has pioneered breakthrough initiatives like Mandi Modernization Program (MMP), e-Pledge, and e-marketing.
NeML’s four services namely Market Linkages, Aggregation of demand, Financial Linkages and Data Sanitization will serve as a foundation to build innovative agri-focused solutions by leveraging technologies to contribute effectively towards increasing the income of farmers and improve farm efficiency/efficiency of the Agriculture sector in the country with an overall goal of Doubling of Farmers’ Incomes.
5.NINJACART
Its mission is to improve the efficiency of post-harvest logistics of agriculture produce through using technology and thereby create value to all the stakeholders. Today Ninjacart operates in and around 11 Indian cities including Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, and Pune.
Ninjacart will develop and host the Agri Marketplace Platform (AMP), which will enable bringing together all the participants in the post-harvest market linkage. There are multiple entities involved in this linkage and coordination between these players is critical in successfully operating the market linkages.
AMP platform will digitally enable and orchestrate the same, thereby bringing in efficiencies in the overall market linkages. As multiple methods of supply are bound to exist based on the product specific characteristics, AMP will be able to align the processes with those needs seamlessly. AMP will be able to incorporate 3rd party content that is made available through open access and standards.
With this we come to the end of this blog. Keep reading on hranker.com for more informative blogs.
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