How AI is enhancing agriculture sustainability in India

For India, agriculture is important. Roughly half of its inhabitants will depend on agriculture for its livelihood, and the nation has the second largest arable land space on the planet. As a lead producer of merchandise like rice, wheat, cotton, sugar, and dairy, India’s agricultural system is crucial not solely to itself, but additionally to the remainder of the world.

Nevertheless, India’s agriculture system is dealing with critical challenges. Extra environment friendly crop yield is important to proceed feeding India’s 1.4 billion folks. Local weather change disrupts our agricultural methods, and on the identical time, unsustainable farming practices exacerbate local weather change by way of vital greenhouse gasoline emissions, water utilization and deforestation. With out change, meals and environmental methods the world over are in danger.

Two groups at Google, AnthroKrishi and Google Associate Innovation, are leveraging AI to deal with this problem, aligned with Google’s AI Principles. The groups’ objective is to progress agricultural sustainability, starting with India. The group is engaged on a complete physique of AI-powered applied sciences to arrange and make the most of India’s agricultural information, essentially the most foundational of which is growing a unified “panorama understanding.”

Panorama understanding leverages satellite tv for pc imagery and machine studying to attract boundaries between fields, the essential unit of agriculture and important in creating significant insights. With subject segments established, the mannequin can decide the acreage of farm fields, forest and woodland areas, and might establish irrigation constructions like farm wells and dug ponds to construct instruments for drought preparedness.