Digital Agriculture and Food Security:

Framework for Integrating Agricultural

Knowledge Services with Digital India

N H Rao

Outline

Strategic challenges of food security and business environment

for farmer
Agricultural Knowledge System in India
Digital India infrastructure to connect farmers with agricultural
knowledge services
Integrating agricultural knowledge services with digital India
infrastructure
Implications for policy and investments

Strategic challenges of food security: food demand of

rising population and middle class

Fig Source: Global Harvest GAP report,

2014

Middle class: households with daily expenditures between $10 and $100 per person in PPP terms

Primary determinants of increased demand:

50-60% from rising population
40-50% from rising incomes uncertainties in product mix from differences in food
access, preferences, culture, geographies, transportation, retail, etc.
Greater emphasis on food quality, health and well being

Strategic challenges of food security:

creating shared value across the value chain
for inclusive growth

More value can be transferred to farmer with timely knowledge and

technology interventions across all components of agricultural value
chain
ICT systems and services platform can enable delivery of customized
knowledge and interventions in a sustainable way

Fig adapted from Ferroni,

Strategic challenges of food security:

technology, sustainability, climate resilience
Technology (TFP growth)

Sustainability of Natural
Resources
By 2050:
four fold increase in land
productivity

Current: 1.9%
Required : 3%

three fold increase in water

productivity
doubling of energy use
efficiency
six fold increase in labour
productivity
While enhancing natural
capital :

Only 59% of food demand in

India can be met in 2030 at
present TFP growth
Source: Global Harvest GAP report,
2014; ICAR vision 2050; FAO

Climate Smart Agriculture

(CSA)
Integrate climate change
into agriculture to reduce
risk through 3 objectives:
Increase farm productivity
Increase adaptive capacity
to climate change at
multiple levels (adaptation)
Reduce GHG emissions;
increase carbon sinks
(mitigation)

Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture (SIA)

process knowledge and systems based
Integration across scales

Strategic challenges of food security:

access and reliability of knowledge services
multiple sources of
information
limited access (~40%)
Major sources: input
dealers, aggregators,
credit agencies and
other farmers (~17%)
Public extension
sources: < 10%

Public extension is the main formal, research

based source of authenticated (peer reviewed)
knowledge
Fig Source: BS Sontakki, NAARM (final report of L&CB project), Ferroni (2011)

The knowledge services challenge: data to wisdom

pyramid

Key issues:
Connect people with information
Enable conversion of information to knowledge
Connect people with other knowledgeable people
Encapsulate knowledge, to make it easier to transfer
Customize and Disseminate knowledge
Scale
Digital India project : can provide the platform to build an
effective Data to Wisdom pyramid at village level

Digital India Infrastructure to connect farmers

with Agricultural Knowledge Services
OFN connectivity up to Block
level in place by 2011
BBNL formed in 2012 to extend
BB connectivity to GPs
(250000): PPP model with TSPs
Pilot studies in 3 States, 20 GPs
(2012) for BMPs
Status on Oct 2015: 3200 GP
connected; one district fully
digital

Fig Source:
BBNL

<500 to >3000
households per GP

Target: 50000 by Dec 2015;

250000 by Dec 2017

Agricultural Knowledge
Services
Education

Data to Information to Knowledge pathways at GP

level
(adapted from: Connected farming in India, Vodafone Foundation, 2015)

Agricultural
Knowledge services

Tailored agricultural information over mobile phones to the

farming community (weather, inputs, production, post
harvest)

Access to local
markets

Provide transparency in daily commodity supply chains

through use of mobile registration services and receipts

Farmer transactions

Integrate farmers into a registered database of dealers,

financial institutions, insurance companies, traders to enable
and track transactions and payments via mobile money.

Field audit

Use tablets to improve efficiency for auditors monitoring

quality, sustainability and certification requirements

Receipts services

Provide transparency in daily commodity supply chains

through use of mobile registration services and receipts.

Smart phone
enabled services

Provides a combination of smart phone enabled information

services, with mobile payments, loans, insurance and
receipting and a virtual marketplace

GIS : provides basic framework for data to wisdom

knowledge platform at each GP level
User Interface: visualization
and decision-support

Real
time

Markets, Profits, Vulnerability,

Risk, contingency plans,
insurance
Crop plan, Weather advisory, GAP,
Drought risk, traceability,
Resource Inventory
(Geospatial Spatial Data Base:
land ownership, climate, soils, prices,
resources, socioeconomic, markets, etc.

Geospatial
Library

NAARM Geospatial Library

Framework for Agricultural Knowledge Services

through Digital India Platform
Geospatial knowledge platform at GP
level for agricultural knowledge
services (farm level data, GAP)
Knowledge delivery on mobile/smart
phones
Integrate farmer transactions with
other services of Digital India at GP:
credit, dealers, traders
This will enable:
Tracking input transactions and
operations (traceability)
Access to authenticated
knowledge
Implementation of GAP

Customized
knowledge
delivery to

Link GAP to insurance, credit,

procurement transactions

Implications for policy and action

National market for agriculture for web based transactions(approved

by cabinet)
Ensuring authenticated knowledge - link with NARS / KVK
Trained personnel at GP to interface with farmers investments in
skill building in managing knowledge services at GP
Integration with markets and logistics network
Eventual links with sensor based data from farms
Sensor data , archival data and other data to provide base for big data
analytics based knowledge discovery and decisions

Eventually

Big data analytics based knowledge generation and transfer can be enabled
with data from 250000 GPs and other sources

Fig source: Matt darr, 2015

Thank you