Artificial intelligence comes to farming in India | BBC News

So we talked about groceries,

the food we buy off the shelf, of course,

it's all cultivated and grown on farms.

And if we head to India, 50% of the workforce are employed in agriculture

and a growing population, now at 1.4 billion,

are dependent on the crops produced.

But traditional methods are now making way for new technology

that promises to make farms more efficient, productive, and profitable,

thanks to artificial intelligence.

Archana Shukla reports.

For generations, Indian farms have been sown and tilled

only with traditional know-how.

But some, like Nitin Patil, are trying out something different.

With sensor devices on his vineyard

that check weather and soil health and uses artificial intelligence

to figure out when to water the crops, add fertilizer, and tackle pests.

Nitin then receives a precise advisory on a mobile app.

This vineyard where we are now,

it has no groundwater sources,

and we are growing these wines with the water

that we purchase from outside tankers.

With the help of this AI data,

we are now able to irrigate them only at the crucial stage.

And that's helping us to say around 50% of the water

that they actually used, we used to give before.

Built in India, Silicon Valley, Bangalore, by startup fossil agritech,

the service has led to a near 25% boost in productivity

on crops like grapes and guavas.

Informed decision-making is only one part of the solution to improve productivity,

but weeding out inefficiencies in the existing age-old agricultural practices

is also crucial.

AI-powered robots offer a solution.

This one is equipped with precision cameras

that scan the ground in real-time,

programmed to avoid wasteful spraying.

The way spraying is done in India is on an acre level,

and our mission is to boil that down into a plant-level decision-making.

Just by spraying only on the plant,

we are seeing a 56% savings.

Improved rural digital connectivity and government support

for agri-tech startups has pushed farm innovations.

But even now, just 2% cultivators use tech in farming.

We really need to enable the digital public infrastructure,

and second is going to be public-private partnerships.

India will always be resource constrained.

We possibly are perhaps lowest in the yield level.

We possibly are pretty much constrained on finance

and insurance services for the farmers.

And that's where the gap needs to be filled up with AI.

Data-driven agriculture promises profitability,

but will need considerable time and investment

to reach majority of India's farmers.

Archana Shukla, BBC News, Bangalore.