Digital Agriculture –

A key enabler for

nutritional security

and SDGs David J Bergvinson, DG ICRISAT

17 Sustainable Development Goals with emphasis on sustainable and equitable food systems

ICRISAT’s holistic approach to the agricultural R4D value chain

Cross-cutting issues

Mainstreaming nutrition

Empowering women – women are consulted,

involved and supported to lead

Attracting youth to agriculture

Approach for Adoption

Participatory approach and partnering –

working side by side

Building capacity – at a national and

local level

Integrating communications - to

build awareness and share knowledge

Monitoring and evaluation – for

feedback and adjustment

Policy support – work closely with

government to encourage the

needed policies

Developing

on-farm practices and technologies

Analyzing key problems

and opportunities

Managing

soil and water

Crop Improvement

& seed Access

Diversifying Farms

Introducing

processing

Facilitating

market access

Driving market development

Pyramid of Economic Opportunity

Majority of smallholder farmers with limited access to relevant information and market knowledge to increase profitability

>500 million

International processors and markets

National processors

National warehouses

National aggregators

Regional aggregators

Local aggregators

100s

Local value addition $$$$

Local storage $$

Mobile offers a platform for information symmetry and connecting farmers to higher value markets and unit prices

Indian Agriculture – a quick reality check • India is characterized by small farm holdings.

‒ 80% land holdings less than 2 ha(5 acres) ‒ 55% of India’s population engaged in Agriculture ‒ Farming non-remunerative: > 50% farmers in India in

debt. ‒ Farmers capital constrained for investing in

Mechanization. ‒ Children of farmers opt out of farming : Average age of

farmers globally is 60 years. • Farming is more riskier

‒ Volatility in prices (Markets) ‒ Unpredictable Monsoon (Monsoons) ‒ Many new risks emerging

• Policy focussed mainly on Productivity

Agriculture is a High Risk Activity

Agriculture Risk

Production Risk

Weather

labour

knowledge

Quality Inputs

Access to Credit

Post Harvest Risks

Storage

Market Risk

Market Information

Access to

Market Price

Volatility

Ecological Risk

Limited Land

Limited Water

• Climate Change will cause more uncertainty

•Mechanization mitigates labour shortage but funding is constrained.

• Traditional Agriculture extension systems are inadequate and lack depth to help farmers deal with exigencies like pests, disease etc

• Timely access to quality seeds and fertilizers is still unreliable

•Most farmers lack access to structured credit markets making them a prey for the money lenders

• India loses about one third farm produce for want of quality storage

•High levels of Information asymmetry due to variety of reasons

•Access to markets is still a challenge due to high transportation costs

• Price Volatility tends to benefit only speculators

•Rapidly degrading land and soil health pose a challenge to ecology and future productivity.

•Declining Ground water table and erratic rainfall poses a serious challenge to reliable source of water for irrigation

Risk Mitigation • Mechanization can address just one of the many risks that have been listed. • To mitigate most of the risks faced by agriculture today, technology adoption is imperative. • Some technologies that could be disruptive in the sphere of agriculture are

• Remote Sensing • Drones/Unmanned Aerial Vehicles • Big Data and Analytics • Mobile Soil Testing Laboratories • Soil Health Cards • Digital Soil Maps • Mobile Money/digital wallets • National Identity Databases ( Aadhaar) • Mobile Phones • E-Commerce • Plant Sensors

• Digital Technologies have the potential to create equitable opportunities for Small Holder

Farmers to realize their full potential by leveraging technologies along the Agriculture Value Chain

• These technologies address populations that were bypassed in the analogue era - especially Women and Youth

• Digitization along the agricultural value chain maximizes benefits to the two ends of the value chain - Farmers and the Consumers

What is Digital Agriculture?

• Digital Agriculture - ICT and data ecosystems to support the development and delivery of timely, targeted information and services to make farming profitable and sustainable while delivering safe nutritious and affordable food for ALL.

• Technical Definition: Leveraging digital technologies (cloud, mobile, remote sensing, sensors, bioinformatics and systems biology – and others) to support demand-driven innovation of sustainable and equitable interventions for ecological intensification of modern food systems.

Ref: Accenture Precision Agriculture Services

The Vision Enhancing agriculture productivity to meet the

nutritional needs in an environmentally sustainable way while enhancing

the capacity of smallholder farmers to manage risk

Strategy 1: Self-sufficiency in pulse production

• Short term (3-5 years) – expand the area under pulses (rice fallows and increasing cropping intensity through intercropping)

• Medium term (5-7 years) – intensification through increasing productivity by using high-yielding cultivars developed using molecular breeding, mechanization to increase local processing and storage, and further increases in water and nutrient use efficiency.

• Long-term (>7 years) – research in high-end areas such as gene editing (eg CRISPR Cas9), expanded use of systems biology to improve nutritional quality and climate resilience of pulses.

Digital Agriculture: geospatial mapping and targeting of pulse varieties based on soil, cropping system, markets, labor/mechanization/storage logistics, spot and e-markets, knowledge exchange

Multi-year, cycle, location

testing

Integrated database, analysis,

and advancement tools Integrate pedigree database

Germplasm management inventory

Multi-year trial analysis

Inbred characterization (phenotypes and genotypes)

Early recycling and early discarding

Fix & Produce

Select Parents

Select Individuals

Characterize Diverse Genetic

Resources

Identify & recombine superior

genotypes

Multi-year test, select, and

advance the best lines

Parental

Selection Tool: Pedigree Inventory and

Verification system

QC, Genetic Similarity

Germplasm Classification,

Characterization

META Inbreds

BLUP, GBLUP

MAS/GS Tool MABC, MARS

Forward Breeding Haplotypes

QTL Mapping & GWAS

Genome wide Prediction and Selection

Integration of Genomic Information

Scale, Capability,

Decision Support,

Operation,

Management Newly improved

lines

1. Quality, cost effective data collection (Collaboration)

2. Effective data management and curation (Phase1)

3. Efficient workflows and accurate analysis pipelines (Phase 2)

4. User friendly and comprehensive decision support tools (Phase 3)

Strategy 2: Enhancing water use efficiency on farms

• Zonal crop planning based on rainfall and hydrology • Hydrology studies and aquifer mapping ensure

recharging through strategic placement of rainwater harvesting structures.

• Enhancing water use efficiency through conjunctive use of green and blue water efficiently.

• Accelerated irrigation benefits can be achieved by reducing transmission losses and by adopting the goal of “zero flood irrigation by 2020”

Drip irrigation of pigeonpea

Digital Agriculture: remote sensing to generate hydrological maps, provide down-scaled weather data, optimize retension and irrigation schemes. Mobile-enabled water meters to manage and value water. Sensor networks to optimize drip irrigation.

Strategy 3: Soil health mapping • Farm profitability can be increased

up to 120% using soil test-based fertilizer recommendations.

• Generation of digital soil maps for the country.

• Develop and adopt new fertilizer recommendation strategy based on soil health mapping for different crops and cropping seasons.

Digital Agriculture: Digital soil maps to support site-specific recommendations, mobile-enabled delivery of fertilizer subsidy to farmers to improve soil health and economics of production.

Strategy 4: Transforming agriculture markets

• Develop a ICT-based national agriculture market

• Digitalize and network all markets using ICT. Improved e-trading, computerized billing end to end process.

• Establishment of improved testing and grading systems

• Developing forward and backward linkages of markets through Farmer Producer organizations. Digital Agriculture: value chain logistics to compress transaction costs, spot and e-markets to push value to farmers and consumers, traceability for food safety, knowledge exchange to improve nutrition.

Strategy 5: Weather-based crop insurance

• Establishing pilots with quality automatic weather stations representing several farmers’ fields in one village or a cluster of villages is the key for weather index based insurance

• The Farm Livelihood Obligation Fund (FLO-F) would envisage creating an initial pool for public sector insurance companies to enable premium payments.

• Weather-based crop insurance to be integrated with the electronic platform facilitating transactions in National Agricultural Market.

Digital Agriculture: down-scaled weather supported by remote sensing (radar) and sensor networks to trigger crop surveys; terrestrial validation using mobile and advanced image analytics; payment to DBT and mobile money accounts tracked by Aadhaar to ensure those cultivating the land can manage production risks as weather variability increases – pockets of drought, flooding and hail.

Strategy 6: Digital agriculture

• Spatial (and Temporal) Data Infrastructure (SDI) = Smart Development Infrastructure and low-cost smart phones and tablets to support the bi-directional flow of data and information to rural consumers.

• Increase value chain efficiency for upstream access to appropriate inputs and credit; targeted recommendations to improve productivity through to market integration based on agreed grades, standards and prices.

• ICT can help target and validate subsidies to increase farm profitability and manage production and market risks that in turn give famers confidence to invest in their farms to further increase productivity.

Digital Agriculture: India is uniquely positioned with Aadhaar infrastructure to offer personalized interventions to farmer families by leveraging mobile, and SDI to increase farm profitability, sustainability and equity to support a modern and nutritious food system.

Fertilizer Usage Data

Down streamed Weather Data

Market Information (mandi prices)

Water Availability

Soil Health Data

High resolution map to anchor the data based on Lat and Long

Artificial Intelligence

Engine

International Commodity

Markets

Agriculture Input markets

Crop recommendations Fertilizer recommendations Policy recommendations

Monitoring and Evaluation Engine

Aadhar database Planning and

Budgeting

State Finance Dept.

The layers that underlie the farm field represent the notion that visual mapping

would allow the farmer, and the farmer's advisors, to see meaningful

correlations to inform future decisions

What do we want to achieve

Bio-informatics/Systems Biology

Co-ordination/ Collaboration

MOOCs & Advisory

E-Commerce

Financial Services

Ecosystem of Integrated services offered through public- and private-sector providers, civil society

and farmers organizations Demand-driven innovation supported

by rapid feedback loops

Crop improvement

Inputs and farmer services Post-harvest handling and access to markets Research and development

Discovery Agronomic

research Fertilizer/irrigation/ Other input systems

Farm management

Seed systems

Knowledge exchange

Aggregation, quality and

storage

End-user demand

Processing

Cloud-enabled Geospatial/Temporal Data Infrastructure

Digital agriculture to support equitable value chains

Global Unique Identifier Database (e.g. Aadhaar, Service Providers)

Leverage location and time to

drive market insight

R&D for accelerated genetic

gains and improved nutrition

Mobile

Enabling policy environment (e.g. Big Data Governance to protect Personal Information)

ICRISAT is a member of the CGIAR Consortium

Please join us in

improving the lives

of smallholder

farmers through

demand-driven

innovation

supported by

Digital Agriculture

d.bergvinson@cgiar.org