ICTs in agriculture is no longer a rhetoric. Big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence are going to change the way farmers grow crops. ICT4D, a four-day international conference, which began here on Monday, displayed the shape of things to come in agriculture.

The Information and Communication Technologies For Development showed the way by launching a CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture.

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research will use the platform to use the extensive data that its 15 constituent organisations gather from across the world.

Farm related problems The CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture will be jointly led by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in partnership with tech giants, including IBM and Amazon.

The CGIAR has tied up with T-Hub, the technology incubator in Hyderabad, to help companies in analysing the data to find solutions for specific problems related to agriculture.

The multimillion-dollar initiative plans to disrupt food production across the developing world, with the aim of making it more productive, efficient and resilient – all through the power of information.

‘Collective effort’ “It will bring together thousands of experts, from crop scientists at universities and research organisations, to computer programmers at some of the world’s leading tech firms,” a spokesperson associated with the platform said.

“They will collect, collate and analyse vast amount of data on crops, weather, soils and more, with the aim of producing some of the most precise and reliable recommendations for farmers, governments and policy-makers in developing countries,” he said.

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