May 05, 2018: NITI Aayog and IBM have signed a Statement of Intent to develop a crop yield prediction model using Artificial Intelligence to provide real-time advisory to farmers in Aspirational Districts.
The Intent was signed yesterday in presence of NITI Aayog, CEO Amitabh Kant and IBM India, MD Karan Bajwa. According to an official release, the partnership aims to work together towards use of technology to provide insights to farmers to improve crop productivity, soil yield, control agricultural inputs with the overarching goal of improving farmers’ incomes.
The first phase of the project will focus on developing the model for 10 Aspirational Districts across the States of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
The scope of this project is to introduce and make available climate-aware cognitive farming techniques and identifying systems of crop monitoring, early warning on pest and disease outbreak.
Highlighting the need of such collaborations, Mr Amitabh Kant said, bringing in future technologies like Artificial Intelligence into practical use will have tremendous benefits for the practice of agriculture in the country.
He said, the ten Aspirational Districts chosen will be invigorated with cutting-edge technological support to leap-frog development of agri-based economies. (AIR News)
