Whither digital agriculture in India?

Abstract

Agriculture is central to the Indian economy and suffers from widespread operational inefficiencies that could be corrected by the use of digital agriculture technologies (DA). We review and synthesise available literature concerning digital agriculture in India and anticipate its transformative potential in the coming decade. Although the initial growth of DA was more conspicuous in the downstream sectors and high-value crops, reaching smallholder farmers upstream is slowly emerging despite significant obstacles such as small fragmented holdings, inadequate data infrastructure and public policy, and unequal access to digital infrastructure. Agri-tech enables innovation at many locations within value chains, and a steady shift is occurring in change from individual farms to the whole value chain. Technology in the sector is progressing from information and communication technology-based solutions to Internet of Things and artificial intelligence–machine learning-enabled services. India’s public policy shows signs of a longstanding investment and collaboration in the sector, with an explicit focus on data infrastructure development. We find smallholder predominance, diversity in production systems, the predominance of commodity crops, proximity to urban markets, and public policy as the major factors of DA’s success in India. A stocktake of the available technologies and their applications by the public sector, tech giants, information technology leaders and agri-food tech startups in India strongly indicates a digital transformation of Indian agriculture. However, given the federal structure of governance and agriculture being a state (province) subject, we need to wait to see how DA policies are rolled out and taken up across the country.

Tracking the diverse pathways to value for digital agriculture

“…This is the intended outcome of research policy in France and the EU to support digital agriculture (Bellon-Maurel et al 2023). The process is also implicit in the public-private partnerships reported for Australia (Hansen et al 2023;Lawes et al 2023) and in the digital agriculture start-ups observed in India (Goswami et al 2023). The openness of the public research process is seen as vital for the development of next-generation phenotyping (Tripodi et al 2023).…”

“…Digital agriculture in such organisations may develop out of public sight, but may develop wherever the organisations are integrated vertically. For example, Goswami et al (2023) reports adoption by tech giants in Indian agriculture. Lawes et al (2023) reports the enabling effects of a vertically integrated data supply chain in Australian grains.…”

“…In such cases, the IP is often developed in-house by the supplier and stays there, perhaps protected by patent or specialist knowhow. Examples of this class are cited in India (Goswami et al 2023), Australia (Hansen et al 2023) and Latin America (Puntel et al 2023). However, start-ups also face many difficulties.…”

“…For example, Goswami et al . (2023) reports adoption by tech giants in Indian agriculture. Lawes et al .…”

“…2023; Lawes et al . 2023) and in the digital agriculture start-ups observed in India (Goswami et al . 2023).…”