Adoption of ai in agriculture: The game-changer for Indian farmers

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a study of various AI-powered ICT applications to numerous challenges related to the agriculture life cycle and its positive impact on the well-being of Indian farmers. Technology-driven solutions to various problems, such as soil fertility, inadequate irrigation, pest control, weed management and yield prediction have been discussed, along with, affirmative actions taken by the Indian government to promote smart agriculture. The agricultural life cycle faces many impediments, such as disease, weeds, pest infestation, improper soil conditions, outdated irrigation methods, unpredictable weather conditions, etc. These lead to severe crop failure, food shortage and increasing environmental hazards, driving the farmers to poverty. Extensive research has been done to address these problems in the past few decades. Further, due to the outbreak of pandemic COVID 19, certain restrictions have been imposed by the Indian Government in the farming sector to ensure the safety of farmers from getting infected with the deadly virus. This has resulted in an acute shortage of farmworkers. The use of ICT in agriculture becomes even more important at this crucial time, when, the pandemic has spread across the globe. The ICT based solutions reduce the dependence of farmers on farm-workers and enable them to maintain stable income levels and farm yield, despite the shortage of farm labourers. Various agro-intelligent practices adopted in the last 15 years, worldwide, have also been surveyed, in this paper. Some of the tools and platforms developed by Indian Start-ups to implement smart agriculture and to deal with the shortage of manpower and supply chain disruption due to lockdown during pandemic, have also been discussed. © Proceedings of the 13th IADIS International Conference ICT, Society and Human Beings 2020, ICT 2020 and Proceedings of the 6th IADIS International Conference Connected Smart Cities 2020, CSC 2020 and Proceedings of the 17th IADIS International Conference Web Based Communities and Social Media 2020, WBC 2020 - Part of the 14th Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, MCCSIS 2020. All rights reserved.