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.

1. Digital Agriculture –
A key enabler for
nutritional security
and SDGs
David J Bergvinson, DG ICRISAT

2. 17 Sustainable Development Goals with emphasis on
sustainable and equitable food systems

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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.

9. Ref: Accenture Precision Agriculture Services

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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)

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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

19. Bio-informatics/Systems Biology
Co-
ordination/
Collaborati
on
MOOCs &
Advisory
E-
Commerce
Financial
Services
Ecosystem of Integrated services offered through
public- and private-sector providers, civil society
and farmers organizationsDemand-driven
innovation supported
by rapid feedback loops
Crop
improvement
Inputs and farmer services Post-harvest handling and access to marketsResearch 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)

20. 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