New Delhi, December 6 (IANS). The government is using ‘Artificial Intelligence’ i.e. AI to solve the problems of the agricultural sector, increase agricultural production, make farming sustainable and improve the income of farmers.
For this purpose, an AI-based test was conducted in collaboration with ‘Development Innovation Lab-India’. Under this, a forecast of the time of arrival of local monsoon in some areas of 13 states was prepared for Kharif 2025.
According to Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Ramnath Thakur, an open-source blended model was used. In this, ‘Neural-GCM’, Artificial Intelligence Forecasting System (AIFS) system of ‘European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ i.e. ECMWF and 125 years of rainfall data of Indian Meteorological Department were included.
These forecasts only give the probability of when monsoon will start in your area. This information is important for farmers because the sowing date is decided on its basis.
Local monsoon forecasts were delivered to 3,88,45,214 farmers across 13 states in five languages (Hindi, Oriya, Marathi, Bengali and Punjabi) by sending SMS through M-Kisan portal.
After sending the forecast, feedback from farmers was taken over telephone through farmer call centers in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.
The survey found that about 31 to 52 percent of farmers changed their sowing plans based on these forecasts. This included changing land preparation, sowing time, crop selection and other necessary inputs.
Apart from this, a voice-based AI chatbot named ‘Kisan e-Mitra’ has been created. It has been developed to help farmers answer their queries related to PM Kisan Samman Nidhi, PM Fasal Bima Yojana and Kisan Credit.
The system supports 11 languages and is evolving to help other government programs as well. According to the minister, at present it answers the queries of more than 8,000 farmers every day and has solved more than 93 lakh queries so far.
The National Pest Surveillance System also detects pests in the fields with the help of AI and machine learning, so that timely prevention can be done and there is minimal damage to the crop.
This AI tool is being used by more than 10,000 agricultural extension workers. Farmers send a photo of a pest and this system helps in identifying the pest and suggesting solutions. This reduces insect infestation and crop loss.
The system supports farmers on 66 crops and over 432 types of pests. AI-based analytics are being used in crop-season matching monitoring of sown crops by using field images for satellite-based crop mapping.
–IANS
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