Artificial Intelligence For Agricultural Innovation (AI4AI) Initiative

Context and Approach

Achieving a true transformation of agricultural systems requires a holistic approach, leveraging advancements in emerging technology innovations and engaging all stakeholders to accelerate adoption. Each stakeholder has a critical role to play. Governments can provide infrastructure and innovative policy supported by the right financing mechanisms. Start-ups can enable innovative solutions by leveraging Fourth Industrial Revolution technology. Established companies can collaborate to open new markets through sharing data and intellectual property. Investors and donors can provide growth capital and enable entrepreneurs. Civil society will bring the much-needed human touch to ensure the sustainability of these interventions. A vast sector such as agriculture requires a multi-pronged approach to address issues and generate impactful, actionable recommendations. Against this backdrop, in August 2020 The Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) India launched AI4AI (Artificial Intelligence for Agricultural Innovation), an initiative to leverage AI and other emerging technologies to make a significant impact on the agriculture sector.

Vision and Objectives

AI4AI is conceived as an umbrella programme that seeks to create value across the entire agriculture ecosystem through the deployment of a wide range of emerging technologies, in a way that can scale across India and provide insights and models for other emerging economies. The vision of AI4AI is to “transform the state of agriculture by deploying emerging technologies in an inclusive and sustainable manner.” The AI4AI initiative aims to identify the role of emerging technologies with the potential to achieve global aspirations for agricultural systems. It seeks to develop scalable frameworks to enable the use of these technologies for constructive outcomes, while underscoring the challenges and unintended consequences that may arise. While the program focuses on technological innovation, it recognizes that it is also essential to invest in low-tech interventions, create new and bold policies, improve resource efficiency, build trust and transparency, align toward common objectives, and collaborate in independent working groups. The key objectives of AI4AI are: – to increase digital and financial inclusion among smallholder farmers; – to build trust and transparency through quality and traceability; – to protect the environment from unsustainable practices; and – to establish sustainable farm incomes.

Structure and Process

In August 2020, C4IR India organised an AI4AI workshop that brought together a cross-section of stakeholders to identify priority issues in agriculture that could be addressed using emerging technologies. Break-out groups highlighted a number of challenges and opportunities across the four thematic areas of the workshop, with a focus on identifying solutions based on technology governance. Given the need for specialised knowledge and experience in agricultural innovation, the Centre constituted four working groups (WGS) to address these areas, as follows:-Intelligent Crop Planning: Working Group A-Smart Farming: Working Group B-Farmgate-to-Fork: Working Group C-Data-Driven Agriculture: Working Group D. The WGS are multi-disciplinary, with all essential competencies and sharing common without duplication. Each group has between 20 and 30 members, selected from government, industry (both Indian and multinational), start-ups, civil society, investor groups, research and academia. In addition, the WG members drawn from industry are representative of a broad value chain of sectors that impact the agricultural innovation and emerging technology ecosystem, including:

-Agri-trading, commodity exchanges- Agri-machinery- Agri-inputs, irrigation, infrastructure, warehousing, logistics- Telecom, software, hardware- Agri-processing- Banking, Insurance, Insurance System Integrators, Cloud Service Providers The responsibility of the working groups is to design appropriate plans of action around their respective thematic areas.

From November 2020 to February 2021, C4IR India helped align all actors on common objectives and enable innovation. Four months of sustained dialogue and collaboration revealed the potential impacts of specific technologies and ways to harness them for positive impact in India’s agricultural system. The key findings of this phase of this exercise are detailed in the next section of this report. The AI4AI programme has also launched pilot projects in five districts of the State of Telangana, focusing on priorities in four defined thematic areas:- Intelligent crop planning and sowing-“Buying the right crop in the right soil at the right time” and Data regulation for smart decisions.

The Centre has created a Steering Committee to coordinate the working groups and their interaction with the broader programme. This multi-stakeholder advisory body has the following functions: 1. Provide overall guidance, support and direction to the working groups to help them operate effectively towards achieving their objectives. 2. Coordinate activities across WGS to encourage synergies and convergence among them and avoid duplication of effort. 3. Validate and approve frameworks and action plans designed by WGS in their respective areas. 4. Explore synergies between the AI4AI programme and other national initiatives. 5. In partnership with C4IR India and the World Economic Forum, explore synergies and convergence with other projects addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to meet local challenges and opportunities and boost investment.

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