AI-Powered Initiative to Boost Farmers’ Incomes
Sreenivasulu expressed confidence that the project would lead to measurable improvements in yield and quality of horticultural crops, while strengthening market linkages through effective collaboration among partners.
Vijayawada: In a major push for technology-driven climate-smart agriculture, an entity called Digital Green has launched an AI-powered initiative to enhance smallholder farmers’ incomes.
The initiative is supported by Cisco India and the state department of horticulture. The aim is to boost small-scale farmers’ incomes with AI-enabled advisory.
The project was launched by K. Sreenivasulu, director of horticulture and sericulture, at the commissionerate office in Chuttagunta, Guntur.
The initiative centres on FarmerChat, a multimodal, AI-driven mobile application developed by Digital Green to deliver hyperlocal, multilingual and timely climate-smart advisory to farmers.
Sreenivasulu expressed confidence that the project would lead to measurable improvements in yield and quality of horticultural crops, while strengthening market linkages through effective collaboration among partners.
The initiative aims to reach 50,000 farmers—25,000 through direct onboarding and 25,000 via digital channels—across eight districts: Guntur, Palnadu, Kurnool, Anantapur, Krishna, NTR, Prakasam and Satya Sai, with women making up at least 60 per cent of the participants.
About 300 frontline extension workers from government departments and representatives of five farmer producer organisations would be trained to be onboard farmers and promote the application. Digital outreach and feedback workshops would support its implementation.
Leaders from Cisco and Digital Green said the programme targets the adoption of improved practices by 25 per cent of farmers and a 20 per cent increase in household incomes for 30 per cent of active users over three years.
