The Union Agriculture Ministry has roped in a private firm to track and monitor agriculture related news across the country even in regional languages, which experts welcome the move as a good initiative, but have cautioned the government to carry out regular evaluation of bias and variance in the information.

“Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare in collaboration with Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Wadhwani AI) has developed Krishi 24/7, the first-ever AI-powered solution for automated agricultural news monitoring and analysis, with support from Google.org,” the agriculture ministry said on November 6.

“Krishi 24/7 will aid the government to identify relevant news, generate timely alerts, and take prompt action to protect farmers’ interests and promote sustainable agricultural growth through improved decision-making,” the ministry said.

Jaipur-based analyst Rituraj Tiwari said it is good to see government implementing AI in sectors like agriculture which can grow immensely through use of technology. “Extracting essence of every news and then disseminating to relevant circle will certainly empower farmers, agri experts and policymakers,” Tiwari said.

‘Trend setting’

On the other hand, food policy expert S Chandrasekaran said that using AI-powered solution for automated agricultural news monitoring and analysis is a trend setting initiative in the policy formulation. However, outcome will be dependent on choosing the right learning model, representative training data set and monitoring the performance using real data, he added.

“Considering the fact that the analysis will be used for policy formulations, in particular food security, the continuous findings in regular interval with a sustained audit of bias and variance is essential,” Chandrasekaran said.

The ministry said that introduction of Krishi 24/7 addresses the need for an efficient mechanism to identify and manage agricultural news articles of interest to aid timely decision-making. The tool scans news articles in multiple languages and translates them into English while extracting essential information from those write ups with source link based on headline, crop name, event type, date, location and severity. It will ensure that the ministry receives timely updates on relevant events published on the web.

Launching the initiative, Agriculture Secretary Manoj Ahuja said, “This news monitoring system will not just keep us informed but empower us to shape the narrative. In the spirit of continuous improvement, we remain open to enhancing this system as we move forward. As the world evolves, so should our tools and methods. Let us work together to ensure that this news monitoring system becomes a dynamic force, adaptable to the changing landscape of information, and a valuable asset in our mission to better serve our farmers,” he said.

Samuel Praveen Kumar, a joint secretary in the ministry, said the solution is intended to provide a near real time monitoring of the news articles on agriculture ecosystem published online which will assist the government to identify news of interest and provide a comprehensive mechanism to shortlist events, create alerts, and take timely action.

Wadhwani AI has developed a similar solution for event tracking and analysis for disease outbreaks for the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). Wadhwani AI’s associate director JP Tripathi said that it wants to build AI solutions for existing challenges as news monitoring and validation have been time-consuming when done manually.

Press Information Bureau (PIB), the government’s media relations wing, has been supplying relevant news and views published in newspapers and online portals in Hindi, English and regional languages on a daily basis to each ministry.

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