“Farmer income rises  when the crop becomes a data-rich product”

Read this nonsensical statement amidst a verbiage of a presentation by an AI expert. As someone who has worked with farmers for long and who has studied a bit about the various government farmer’s income enhancement attempts since the days of Green Revolution, the absurdity of the above statement hit me since days now.

The number of technologies that we have promoted in the name of enhancing farmer’s income is mind boggling, let me list it chronologically as I recollect it –

• Chemical inputs
• HYV seeds
• Regulated irrigation
• Farm implements
• Automation of implements
• Hybrid seeds
• Aggregation
• Digitalization
• Value-chain integration
• Gene modification of seeds
• Gene editing of seeds
• AI integration

In every one of these, the promoters have profited. But no one can claim that there has been a sustained increase in the farmer’s income or the soil nutrition. If one has gained, the other has lost, resulting in the long term loss for the farmer. Cost-benefit analysis based on available data show, that early technology interventions resulted in farmer’s income going up by even upto 40-90%, in comparison to the ICT interventions that on an average enhanced farm income by around 10%.  

ICT tech interventions in farm sector came offering more accurate weather forecast, better information on mandi prices, and access to ‘expert’s. I was part of the team that brought this to agriculture in one of the earliest such projects in 2002. The technology only replaced the existing medium which was offering these services with a new one and in return demanded that the farmer acquire a new gadget at a cost. Let me give you some examples of what the current ICT provides -

Weather forecast: Radio (cheap, local language, local station, live human) -> App (more precise with payment, local language translated by machine with limitations, real time, non-human)

Market prices: Local mandi / radio (cheap, involved travel, local language, proximate information, often live human) -> App (free one like eNam with inconsistent updates, unreliable price indicators, non-human)

Access to Expert: Extension officer of the agriculture department (live human, with hands-on experience in the region) -> App (the AI bot that reduces the questions to a limited menu card, and endlessly repeats itself if no answer is found)

It is critical to realize that most of the apps do not have a back up human. There is no transparent grievance redressal mechanism or human oversight for AI driven app services. Alongside the outreach by the government agencies is being dismantled thanks to the mis-placed faith in technology and unrealistic projects funded by multi-lateral institutions.

Tech interventions (often mere fantasies) are initially prescribed through ‘tech transfer’ route, through some ambitious consultant / bureaucrat to a government project, preferably funded by multi-lateral organizations (they have stakes in the game from personal to institutional). The same is presented as having achieved ‘success’ as pilots to meet the committed targets with cooked up numbers by the government project teams to the same multi-lateral funding organizations, the multi-lateral organization in turn, presents the same to the government as slick data to justify a statewide policy of the technology often with a fine print of potential negative consequences. Bureaucracy, ambitious to crown itself with new ‘success’ buys these and presents to political bosses as a series of broken down contractual possibilities, leaving out the fine print. This is how every tech-fantasy becomes a new norm in India.    

The gadget that farmer is asked to buy today is the smart phone, preferably the latest and most sophisticated version to enable AI to run from it. The cost of the gadgets have not come down in real terms, The share of low income household debt on consumer goods including smart phones is nearly 1/3rd today and smartphone penetration is nearly 90% indicating a recurring cost burden on rural economy.  

I am reminded yet again of the second part of the famous Talisman of Gandhi, in which he says, “will it give the poor man control over his life” as an testimony of any intervention that can be made.

Every one of the tech interventions have ensured that the control over his life for the farmer is compromised. Farmer has contributed to the earning of the following sections of society in the name of increasing the farmer’s household income - scientist, consultant, inspector, supervisor, certifier, salesman, experts, (none of these existed in his traditional non-tech intervention period), not to mention the revenue for the State that goes as indirect tax in each one of these transactions. The latest to be added to this list is the above quoted AI expert.  

When the Prime Minister talks about the large scale adoption of Organic Farming practices, a loosely defined ‘data-rich farm produce’ is basically selling whole lot of data products to the farm sector at high ecological footprint and a distraction to the government. A simple comparison by even an poor AI like Google Gemini comes up with the following conclusion —

In summary, organic farming is generally considered more environmentally friendly due to its focus on building natural ecosystem resilience and the complete exclusion of synthetic chemicals. Data-rich farming, while having potential environmental drawbacks related to technology dependence and potential chemical use, offers significant improvements in efficiency and reduced waste compared to conventional high-input agriculture

None of the high promises made by any tech intervention in farming in the past few decades have borne sustained fruition. And yet, despite all data indicating otherwise, claims for tech interventions alone are made without any accountability. I remember a few years ago a farmer suggesting that every tech intervention promoter sign a liability contract as a pre-condition. It would be easier if their claims were more modest and balanced indicating also the cost - benefit vis-a-vis natural and organic farming that the civil society has been for decades struggling to promote in this state. Ultimate test for accountability of course, would have been if any one of those several people claiming to have enhanced the farmer’s income had left their careers to do farming themselves, I don’t think any of the previous tech developers had the courage to do it, I don’t think the AI developer has it in them too. But the farmer oblivious to all of these careers she has shaped and nurtured away from the farm land, carries on. This too will pass.

— Ram, 20/11/2025

Ironically, the above data on cost-benefit and the comparison with organic farming is also fetched by AI.