AI can bridge information gap in agriculture: MeitY Secretary

New Delhi: MeitY Secretary S Krishnan, who himself is a registered farmer, on Tuesday called for using artificial intelligence to bridge the information gap in agriculture, saying the old extension network has broken down and the focus has shifted to channelling inputs rather than providing the advisory support farmers actually need.

Krishnan, who revealed that he has an agricultural loan in his personal account and that his mother supervises the cultivation on his farm, said timely and reliable advice remains the single most important thing farmers seek -- and the one thing the system has consistently failed to deliver.

"As farmers, they always look for advice, which is timely. And many people say that the old extension network has broken down. ...Across many agriculture departments and state governments, the far greater focus is how inputs get channelised. There is less attention to the kind of advice that farmers really want," the secretary in Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), said at the AI Impact Summit here.

He described farmers as rational economic actors who are often willing to pay for inputs and advice they value, noting that subsidised inputs are frequently received with "scepticism rather than gratitude", a reality, he said, that "very few people recognise."

"Making up for the information asymmetry, expanding the effectiveness of extension workers, or using technology to ensure that kind of advice is available on a real-time basis, that is a huge impact AI can have," he said.

On access to credit, the Secretary pointed to a persistent paradox in rural India where small farmers are legally not required to furnish collateral to borrow, yet are routinely asked to do so.

He said a significant portion of what is classified as agricultural credit is in fact jewel loans - advances made against household assets because farmers are unable to produce land and registration documents in an acceptable form.

"If the AgriStack can solve that problem, it would represent a transformative step forward," he said.

On AI's role in the gender space, Krishnan said the technology must both create agency for women to access services and have adequate guardrails against misuse.

"I was struck by the kind of examples, both which are empowering, those which create agency to enable women to access various services better, and at the same time, also ways in which their interests need to be protected in an AI-related world and an AI-related environment," he said.

The Secretary also stressed the value of cross-country learning, noting that use cases from across the Global South offered lessons directly applicable to India.

"Sometimes the same set of questions would have been addressed earlier in a different scenario, in a different country, in a different setting, and to understand how that worked is always useful in making policy," he said.

Stepping back from sector-specific applications, he said the real test of AI would not be in whether it achieves artificial general intelligence or superintelligence, but in whether it delivers measurable gains in sectors where the state has long underperformed.

"Ultimately, if AI as a technology is to have an impact, it has to have impact in real world sectors, whether it is agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare, education, governance, each of these spaces, that is where we need to really see the impact," he said.

"Enough has not been done to drive meaningful productivity gains or to deliver services that meet people's expectations. These are precisely the areas where AI can make significant contributions," Krishnan added.