“Agritech: Shaping Agriculture in Emerging Economies, Today and Tomorrow” Report released by World Economic Forum (WEF) | Current Affairs | Vision IAS
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“Agritech: Shaping Agriculture in Emerging Economies, Today and Tomorrow” Report released by World Economic Forum (WEF)

Posted 10 May 2024

2 min read

It is an outcome of WEF’s AI for Agriculture Innovation (AI4AI) initiative, which aims to scale agritech (agricultural technology) services through public-private partnerships.

  • It elaborates on the role of agritech in shaping the agriculture ecosystem across four broad categories (see table). 

Category

Work Area

Use Cases

Intelligent crop planning

Creating a detailed, market-oriented and sustainable crop plan.

Gene Editing and use of AI, soil testing-based advice. 

Smart Farming

Use of technologies to improve efficiency in farm operations. 

AI and Augmented Reality (AR) for crop planning, hyperlocal weather predictions, yield prediction and distributed ledger-based index insurance. 

Farmgate-to-fork

Connecting farmers to market and addressing underlying issues like crop loss between farm and market. 

Traceability, Internet of Things (IoT) enabled warehousing, smart logistics. 

Data as an enabler

Ease of access to high quality, usable data. 

Use of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for farmers’ welfare. 

Challenges in agritech adoption:

  • High up-front acquisition costs and lack of uniform standards.
  • Farm data sharing and ownership issues.
  • Unclear return on investment. 

Way forward:

  • Gender-inclusive digital architecture.
  • Public–private partnership for scaling agritech.
  • Educate and generate interest in farmers.

India’s Initiative for Agritech adoption

  • Agri Stack: Facilitates the delivery of agritech services to farmers by government and agri-tech start-ups.
    • It holds three primary datasets: farmer identity; geotagged farm location; and crops-sown data.
  • Agricultural Data Exchange (ADeX): India’s first data exchange platform for farmer services.
  • Digital Agriculture Mission (DAM): Includes India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA), Farmers Database, Unified Farmers Service Interface (UFSI), National e-Governance Plan in Agriculture (NeGPA). 
  • Tags :
  • Agritech
  • Smart Farming
  • Agri Stack
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