As part of the plan, the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare will soon launch a digital platform — Virtually Integrated System for Access to Agricultural Resources (VISTAAR) — designed to connect farmers in real-time with vital agricultural information and services, two officials aware of the development said.
The platform is aimed at building a more informed, qualified and competent agricultural community. By connecting farmers with Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), research institutions and agricultural startups, the digital platform plans to bridge the gap between scientific research and field application. This comes against the backdrop of agriculture and allied sectors contributing around 18% to India’s gross domestic product (GDP), with around 46% of India’s workforce dependent on agriculture.
“We are working on the modalities and soon VISTAAR will be launched for farmers. The open and innovative network is designed to increase the income of smallholder farmers. This would be achieved by digitizing social networks so that farmers and those who work with them, such as scientists, agricultural workers and start-ups, share knowledge with each other on an unprecedented scale,” said the first of the two officials, who previously spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The platform aims to digitally empower farmers by giving them easy access to reliable real-time agricultural information and services. It helps farmers learn modern farming techniques, make informed decisions and improve productivity. Integrating weather, soil, market and research data on one platform would support precision agriculture, reduce risk, boost income and promote sustainable technology-based agriculture across the country.
One of the main features of the platform is that it will enable experts to provide personalized agricultural advice to agricultural extension workers and farmers using multilingual AI-powered tools such as chat systems, mobile applications and web portals. This will make farmer advice faster, more relevant and easier to understand, helping branch staff to quickly identify and address farmers’ needs at the field level.
With such an interface, extension workers and farmers can ask questions and get instant answers in local languages using voice and text across Indian languages, which will be powered by Bhashini, an AI language translation platform that aims to break language barriers by providing access to government services and digital content in multiple Indian languages. Answers would include relevant videos and feature farming innovations.
“Farmer assistance will continue to improve with each interaction and based on feedback from branch staff and farmers, which would ensure that future conversations are better tailored to local farming conditions,” the second person said.
Inquiries emailed to the Department of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare remained unanswered as of press time.
With more locally tailored advice, farmers will be empowered to adopt climate-smart farming practices that will lead to real productivity and profit. “The initiative will go a long way in increasing production by skilled farmers and can serve as key inputs for policy making as well as policy research,” said Shweta Saini, CEO, Arcus Policy Research.
“The initiative will help farmers by providing real-time, location-specific guidance using digital tools, satellite data and artificial intelligence. It will act as a virtual classroom to enable farmers learn best practices in crop management, irrigation and pest control,” said a former scientist associated with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).
According to First Person, this approach ensures that farmers regardless of gender can access content through various channels such as WhatsApp, Telegram, standalone app, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and other social media.
Apart from extension workers themselves and individual farmers, the platform is likely to empower various farmer groups such as women-led self-help groups and FPOs (Farmer Producer Organizations). “Once operational, we can go online and access and benefit from government schemes as well as climate smart practices,” said Puneet Singh Thind, founder and director of Haryana-based Northern Farmers Mega FPO.
“Nowadays, farmers have access to many resources to search for information online, but it is very difficult to ascertain the authenticity of the information. In such a scenario, VISTAAR’s open digital public infrastructure for agricultural extension will go a long way in disseminating correct information,” said Umendra Dutt, Executive Director, Kheti Virasat Mission. The organization is involved in promoting organic farming across India.
