IndEA Digital Ecosystem in Agriculture Sub-Working Group 1
IDEA: Context, Vision and Scope
25 February 2020
Terms of References
• Assess the transformative requirements contained in the Report of the Committee on DFI, Report on Policies and Action Plan for Secure and Sustainable Agriculture prepared under the aegis of PSA to GoI, SDG’s relating to Agriculture and research work conducted by the Ministry in the recent past.
• Establish the justification for digital and technological interventions required to drive the transformation agenda for the agriculture sector in particular and primary sector in general.
• Define the Vision, Objectives and Core Principles for the development and/ or evolution of the Digital Agriculture Ecosystem.
• Study national and international best practices in the use of technology for enhancing the realization of outcomes envisaged for the agriculture sector.
• Prepare an illustrative list of digital services that should be promoted.
Functional Requirements in Agriculture
• Pre-Production Stage
• Crop Management
• Post-Production Stage
• Agricultural Research
• Agricultural Education
• Training
• IEC
• Benefits Transfer
• Soil Health Management
• Water Management
• Farm Equipment / Mechanisation
• Analytics
• Scheme Management
• Empower Farmers as Partner
• Identification of Game Changers
• Identification of Quick Wins
• Logistics
• Value Added Services
• Marketing – Domestic
• Marketing – International Trade
Context
• Centrality of Agriculture to India
• High number of dependents on the Sector
• Dominated by legacy systems
• Linked with Livelihood issues
• Food Security of the Nation
• Shift of focus from production & productivity to farmers’ income, value &
quality
• Sustainable use of resources : Land, Water, other resources
• Existing initiatives in Government (Central & State) & Private Sector (Profit &
Non Profit)
Vision
Alt 1: To create a comprehensive integrated Federated Farmers’ database based on land records so as to provide value-added Digital Services to the farmers covering the entire agricultural cycle, with a focus on better planning, monitoring, strategy
formulation and smooth implementation of DBT schemes by developing appropriate National Digital Eco-system for the Indian Agriculture Sector.
Alt 2: “To have each and every of India’s 14 crore farmers operate with agency
on an integrated digital ecosystem and be able to extract exponentially higher
economic value from their agriculture operations by meaningfully interacting
with the markets, governments, and knowledge systems”.
Objectives of IDEA - Questions
• Do smallholder farmers access a full range of services?
• Do service providers reach farmers at Scale?
• Transcend weak rural infrastructure?
• Business along agriculture value chains become profitable?
• Establish more stable & transparent markets?
• Increase income for farmers?
• Drive higher productivity rates?
• Drive financial inclusion?
• Promote food safety?
• Support Climate-smart agriculture?
• Enable government to support and manage policy for agriculture?
• Build rural economies?
• Reduce water consumption?
• Improve quality of genetic material?
• Drive Job creation?
Objectives of IDEA – Why IDEA?
• Federated Core Digital platform for managing farmers’ data
• Build National Farmers’ Database
• Transparency & Standards
• Collaborated platform for all stakeholders
• Promoting Sustainable Development Goals in Agriculture Sector
• Ease of farming for Farmers
• Reduce costs for farmers
• Increase value for farmers
• Using latest AI & Data tools to ensure better program development, delivery & services
• Enabling policy makers make better polcies for the Agriculture sector
• Efficiency and effectiveness of Governance
• Ensure ease of program rollover by integrating with all existing databases and platforms
Objectives of IDEA – End Goal
• Help the farmers increase income by building value chain ownership in the areas of semi-processed goods, end-consumer products.
• Help the farmers reduce risk by building a diverse portfolio of crops, livestock, and ancillary agri-enterprises.
• Enrich local ecosystems by creating short loop supply chains in the areas of production, consumption, processing, storage, logistics, distribution, and knowledge.
• Deploy sustainable agriculture practices at scale so that the
ecosystem can recover from the current stress and provide
sustainability to the field of agriculture.
Overview
• NeGPA
• Ongoing initiatives: mKisan, KCC, Kisan Suvidha, Portals, Websites, Servers, Extension System
• Flagship Schemes of GoI in Agriculture Sector : PM-Kisan, PMFBY, SHC
• Other Schemes
• Public Sector Initiatives in State Govts/Uts – best practices
• Private Sector Initiatives in India – best practices
• International best practices
Value Stream
• For Farmers
• For Government
• For Industry
• For Academic Institutions
• For R&D Institutions
• For NGOs
• For Civil Societies
• For Traders
• For Input Dealers
Life Cycle of Crop
• Pre-harvest Activities
• Harvest Activities
• Post-harvest Activities
Life Cycle of Farmer
• Crops
• Horticulture
• Fisheries
• Cattle Rearing
• Sericulture
• Integrated Agriculture
Core Principles
• Single source of Truth regarding a farmer in the country.
• Trustworthiness of information created in the AGRI eco-system
• Capability to link all farmer related schemes to a farmer.
• Well defined process to access farmer data to build value added services
• Capability to devise, plan and implement new schemes to improve farmer’s welfare and income.
• Unique and reliable identification of farmers, agri professionals,
agri businesses, input dealers, traders, agri exporters
Core Principles
•The principle of Equitability
•It is often the case that those who may in the most need to benefit from technology solution are also the ones who have the least access to technology as well as the least ability to harness the true power of technology even when they have access. To that end, the first and the most import principles of a public platform commons is that the platform rules/terms be designed keeping in mind Equitability.
•The principle of Ownership
•System ownership: In complex systems, there are always multiple stakeholders who need to come together for solution to work at scale, and for them to work to the benefit of all involved. To that end, we visualise a network of platforms, each instance owned by different interest groups, and not by a central authority. For example, in the case of platforms for the benefit of smallholder farmers, we see individual instances owned by farmer-federations, retailer-associations, trucker-associations, university-federations, etc.
•Data ownership: Just as the respective stakeholder-interest-groups will own their respective platforms, so will they own their data. Data ownership will extend to more than a stakeholder-interest-group owning its own data. Each entity in the network of platforms (Federation) will own its own data. This principle will be supported by a simple logic that if there is a transaction in the federation that is linked to an entity’s ID, the entity will get to store a machine-readable copy of that transaction in its private data wallet.
•Ownership of Insights: Just as raw data is owned by respective entities, so is derived data, including any analytics or network effects. Any data monetisation that may happen using such data will need to be not only with consent of the data owner, but necessarily with shared monetisation of the data, such that a majority of the monetisation benefit goes to the data owner.
•The principle of Collaboration
•Collaborative technology: Platforms who will become part of the ecosystem need to necessarily integrate with each other using interoperability standards. For the purpose of brevity, we will call this network of platforms as a Federation.
•Collaborative markets: Given that many platforms are multi-sided marketplaces, as well as rich sources of knowledge, content, and analytics, PCL requires that Market Opportunities, Content, and Analytics have transparent and complete visibility within a federation, subject to data privacy rules.
•The principle of Choice
•Users of any given platform instance will have the visibility to all platform instances in the federation and will have the freedom and ability to move from one instance to another if they choose to. If they move from one instance to another, they should be able to carry their historical data with them.
•The various instances within the Federation will have the right to share details about themselves to users so that the user can take an informed decision to migrate from one instance to another.
•The principle of Autonomy
•Last but not the least, the stakeholder-interest-groups will have the right to determine domain rules on the platform, albeit using a process that involves their members. For example – a farmer federation can determine product pricing themselves, rather than following a prescribed pricing, but with the involvement of the member farmers.
Core Principles - Approach
• Increase income by helping the farmer climb up the agri-value chain and reduce risk via diversification. This would mean getting into semi-processing and processing, as well as building a diverse portfolio compared to the current practices of mono-cropping.
• Build a symbiotic relation between the farmer and the environment. This would mean building respect for the environment, identifying incentives, and hand-holding the
journey of farmers adopting sustainable practices.
• Improve collaboration with the government at multiple levels. This would mean bi- directional engagement and aligning policies, schemes and programs to the above two points
• Lay the foundation for large scale open action. This would mean large scale
evangelising and engagement with markets (traders, consumers, service providers),
communities (farmers, VO-s, FPO-s, knowledge organisations), and governments
(politicians, bureaucrats).
Core Principles - Approach
Business Principles
• Improve farmer’s welfare & income by designing specific focused schemes
– Increasing value of agri produce, optimizing input costs, optimize logistics costs
– Decreasing financing costs for farmers & other stakeholders
• Educate & empower farmers to avail wide range of Agriculture services rendered by Public & Private players
• Design to be inclusive
• Ensure security and privacy by design
• Design to measure performance and display accountability of all
providers of service
Business Principles – Value Propositions to Stakeholders
Stakeholder Key Propositions
Farmer Access to markets, inputs, services, knowledge and capital
Ability to climb up the food processing value chain
Risk reduction via portfolio diversification
Capacity to run their business professionally
Landless Labour Opportunities to set up allied businesses that serve local farmers
Skill building in the agri value chain space
Environment Increased soil health (organic carbon, microbes)
Prevention of further soil degradation
Improved water table
Revival of traditional weather hardy seeds
Government Ability to align policies and programs to outcomes on the fields
Strong opportunity to reduce poverty amongst smallholder farmers
Close engagement with the grassroots, digitally
Large amount of granular data for analysis outcomes, issues, gaps, strengths of the smallholder farmer focused initiatives
Granular understanding of the state’s production, processing and logistics capacity
Granular understanding of market gaps & opportunities, and ability to align policies to those
Markets Access for knowledge providers, market linkage, input, infrastructure, capacity building &
mentoring, actual buyers, finance, logistics, business planning / consulting providers
Demand projection
Access to buyers
Data driven planning insights
Choice of buyers / suppliers
Research & Development Organisations Access to needs, gaps and opportunities in the agri-domain
Independent Technology Solution Providers Ability to integrate their solutions with an existing agri-platform that has pre-existing farmers, commodity buyers, governments, donors, investors, opportunities, and the likes
