New Delhi: The smart agricultural systems and technologies, including AI and machine learning (ML), are showing remarkable growth with the investment and expenditure trends expected to triple by 2025 to USD 15.3 billion.
Out of this above figure, AI technologies alone are projected to grow at a CAGR of 25.5%, highlights FICCI-PwC report ‘Redefining Agriculture through Artificial Intelligence: Predicting The Unpredictable.
Within AI interventions, Internet of Things (IoT) enabled agricultural monitoring is the fastest-growing technology segment, projected to be worth USD 4.5 billion by 2025. The global market size for AI in agriculture stood at USD 852.2 million in 2019 and is expected to reach USD 8,379.5 million by 2030, exhibiting a CAGR of 24.8% during the forecast period (2020–2030). This market growth is propelled by increasing penetration of IoT in the agriculture industry with implementation of data generation through sensors and aerial images for crops, leading to an increase in crop productivity through deep-learning technology.
Technology advancements in recent years are reengineering both the upstream and downstream segments of the agriculture value chain. Cutting-edge technologies in AI such as IoT, ML, cloud computing, statistical computing, deep learning, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are enabling the sector to overcome the challenges of productivity, quality, traceability and carbon emission with enhanced profitability.
Key highlights of the Report:
With the adoption of innovative and transformative smart farming practices in the country is gradually becoming a major trend. Smart and technology-driven resource management, modernisation of agriculture supply chains, climate risk mitigation strategy, digitising farm collectives as farmer producer organisations (FPOs), emergence of a start-up ecosystem and government initiatives in digital farming are some of steps being taken to encourage smart farming practices.
The report identifies following intervention areas to enhance the AI based transition of the country’s agriculture sector:
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Regulatory interventions, Policy Interventions and Awareness and Capacity building interventions
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Revise agriculture educational curriculum to include a program on AI
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Establish AgriTech innovation center through PPPs
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Enhance outreach through existing network of Agriculture Universities, KVKs (Krishi vigyan kendras)
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Building simple farmer-friendly systems and establishing sustained partnerships
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Increased investment in low-cost, open-source cloud-based platform solutions