Andhra Pradesh Government implementing AI technology to help farmers increase crop yields
2020-08-14The Central Government has taken initiatives of doubling of farmers’ income by the year 2022. To meet the target they have implement modern technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the farms and to provide accurate and timely information regarding crops, weather and pest infection to the farmers.
This is because AI can improve crop productivity, reduce farm risks and improve the income of the farmers. Agriculture experts also agree that the real income for farmers should come from farms and not from freebies or government subsidies. AI can make all these possible says, agri-tech scientists. AI can turn around farming and make agriculture a profitable profession. Now a group of local farmers from the Guipalli, a small village in the Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh will vouch for this. In the past one year, these farmers are harvesting the benefits of AI on their farms and increase their yield.
In July last year, IT company Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Center of Excellence and Bengaluru based NGO Agastya International Foundation, set up AI and IoT technologies in the local farms of Guipalli. On a daily basis, farms produce hundreds of thousands of data. The aim of the project was to utilise these data effectively, analyse it and help farmers to gain insights on subjects including temperature, water usage and soil conditions.
The solutions included edge compute HPE Edgeline EL300, onsite IoT modules, drone imaging and analysis, a user interface and dashboard for monitoring and reporting of various on-ground parameters and activities at the fields. Images from drones and satellites were used to plot normalised difference vegetation index(NDVI) to demonstrate how it can be applied when scaled to larger farms. The technology and deep learning analytics were deployed to improve the farmers’ decision-making capabilities by providing them visibility into the current conditions of soil and by modelling possible future trends.
The project has generated significant benefits for local farmers. This enabled them to increase crop yields, nutritional value and revenue from their produce by applying technology.
The machine learning algorithms were used to test the soil conditions resulting in approximately 40 per cent savings in the water consumption when compared to traditional methods.
The solution also helped the farmers during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown by helping them remotely monitor the crops and make decisions related to the irrigation, soil treatment, nutrition and harvesting without the need to visit the fields.
The project will continue to assist the farmers as the sowing season approaches. With the early success of this initiative, HPE intends to scale this to help address additional challenges.
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