1. Digital Agriculture and Food Security: Framework for Integrating Agricultural Knowledge Services with Digital India
N H Rao

2. Outline
Strategic challenges of food security and business environment for farmer
Agricultural Knowledge System in India
Digital India – infrastructure to connect farmers with agricultural knowledge services
Integrating agricultural knowledge services with digital India infrastructure
Implications for policy and investments 2

3. Strategic challenges of food security: food demand of rising population and middle class
Fig Source: Global Harvest – GAP report, 2014
Middle class: households with daily expenditures between $10 and $100 per person in PPP terms
Primary determinants of increased demand:
50-60% from rising population
40-50% from rising incomes – uncertainties in product mix from differences in food access, preferences, culture, geographies, transportation, retail, etc.
Greater emphasis on food quality, health and well being

4. Strategic challenges of food security: creating shared value across the value chain for inclusive growth
More value can be transferred to farmer with timely knowledge and technology interventions across all components of agricultural value chain
ICT “systems and services” platform can enable delivery of customized knowledge and interventions in a sustainable way
Fig adapted from Ferroni, 2011

5. Strategic challenges of food security: technology, sustainability, climate resilience
Technology (TFP growth)
Sustainability of Natural Resources
Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA)
By 2050:
four fold increase in land productivity
three fold increase in water productivity
doubling of energy use efficiency
six fold increase in labour productivity
While enhancing natural capital :
Integrate climate change into agriculture to reduce risk through 3 objectives:
Increase farm productivity
Increase adaptive capacity to climate change at multiple levels (adaptation)
Reduce GHG emissions; increase carbon sinks (mitigation)
Current: 1.9% Required : 3%
Only 59% of food demand in India can be met in 2030 at present TFP growth
Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture (SIA) – process knowledge and systems based
Integration across scales
Source: Global Harvest – GAP report, 2014; ICAR vision 2050; FAO

6. Strategic challenges of food security: access and reliability of knowledge services
multiple sources of information
limited access (~40%)
Major sources: input dealers, aggregators, credit agencies and other farmers (~17%)
Public extension sources: < 10%
Public extension is the main formal, research based source of authenticated (peer reviewed) knowledge
Fig Source: BS Sontakki, NAARM (final report of L&CB project), Ferroni (2011)

7. The knowledge services challenge: data to wisdom pyramid
Key issues:
Connect people with information
Enable conversion of information to knowledge
Connect people with other knowledgeable people
Encapsulate knowledge, to make it easier to transfer
Customize and Disseminate knowledge
Scale
Digital India project : can provide the platform to build an effective Data to Wisdom pyramid at village level

8. Digital India – Infrastructure to connect farmers with Agricultural Knowledge Services
OFN connectivity up to Block level in place by 2011
BBNL formed in to extend BB connectivity to GPs (250000): PPP model with TSPs
Pilot studies in 3 States, 20 GPs (2012) for BMPs
Status on Oct 2015: 3200 GP connected; one district fully digital
Target: by Dec 2015; by Dec 2017
Fig Source: BBNL
Agricultural Knowledge Services
Education
Financial services
<500 to >3000 households per GP

9. Data to Information to Knowledge pathways at GP level
(adapted from: Connected farming in India, Vodafone Foundation, 2015)
Agricultural Knowledge services
Tailored agricultural information over mobile phones to the farming community (weather, inputs, production, post harvest)
Access to local markets
Provide transparency in daily commodity supply chains through use of mobile registration services and receipts
Farmer transactions
Integrate farmers into a registered database of dealers, financial institutions, insurance companies, traders to enable and track transactions and payments via mobile money.
Field audit
Use tablets to improve efficiency for auditors monitoring quality, sustainability and certification requirements
Receipts services
Provide transparency in daily commodity supply chains through use of mobile registration services and receipts.
Smart phone enabled services
Provides a combination of smart phone enabled information services, with mobile payments, loans, insurance and receipting and a virtual marketplace

10. GIS : provides basic framework for data to wisdom knowledge platform at each GP level
User Interface: visualization
and decision-support
Real time
Markets, Profits, Vulnerability, Risk, contingency plans, insurance
Crop plan, Weather advisory, GAP, Drought risk, traceability,
Geo-spatial Library
Resource Inventory
(Geospatial Spatial Data Base: land ownership, climate, soils, prices, resources, socioeconomic, markets, etc.

11. NAARM Geospatial Library

14. Customized knowledge delivery to farmer
Framework for Agricultural Knowledge Services through Digital India Platform
Geospatial knowledge platform at GP level for agricultural knowledge services (farm level data, GAP)
Knowledge delivery on mobile/smart phones
Integrate farmer transactions with other services of Digital India at GP: credit, dealers, traders
This will enable:
Tracking input transactions and operations (traceability)
Access to authenticated knowledge
Implementation of GAP
Link GAP to insurance, credit, procurement transactions
Customized knowledge delivery to farmer

15. Implications for policy and action
National market for agriculture for web based transactions(approved by cabinet)
Ensuring authenticated knowledge - link with NARS / KVK
Trained personnel at GP to interface with farmers – investments in skill building in managing knowledge services at GP
Integration with markets and logistics network
Links with sensor based data from farms
Sensor data , archival data and other data to provide base for big data analytics based knowledge discovery and decisions

16. Eventually …… towards wisdom
Big data analytics based knowledge generation and transfer can be enabled with data from GPs and other sources
Fig source: Matt Darr, 2015

17. Thank you