Saagu Baagu: Telangana Govt to scale up agritech services in three districts in Phase II

Telangana government is planning to scale up agritech services to 20,000 chilli and groundnut farmers in three districts in Phase II from this year onwards

Hyderabad: Buoyed with the Artificial Intelligence for Agriculture Innovation (AI4AI) initiative under which 7,000 chilli farmers have access to agritech services, the State government is planning to scale up agritech services to 20,000 chilli and groundnut farmers in three districts in Phase II from this year onwards.

This apart, digital public infrastructure will be introduced in Phase II and Phase III (by 2025) with the target being to reach one lakh farmers across the State. All these initiatives were being planned under the State government’s ‘Saagu Baagu’ project. At present, nearly 7,000 chilli farmers in Khammam have accessed four agritech services, including AI-based advisories, soil testing, produce quality testing and e-commerce – all in the project’s pilot phase.

---

IT Minister KT Rama Rao on Thursday launched the Saagu Baagu Phase 1 report in the presence of Tamil Nadu IT Minister Palanivel Thiagarajan.

“Through the utilization of artificial intelligence, we aim to empower farmers with data-driven crop advisories and market intelligence, ultimately striving to foster agricultural prosperity in Telangana,” Rama Rao said.

The AI4AI initiative conceptualized in partnership with World Economic Forum aims at transforming the agriculture sector by promoting usage of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies. These technologies have the potential to significantly contribute to improving productivity and sustainability. But they are also marked by fragmented technological infrastructure, high costs of operations, lack of access to data and limited technical expertise and all these factors hamper the scale of their impact. AI4AI addresses these challenges to scale emerging technologies.

The Saagu Baagu project being implemented by State government is an example of agriculture value chain transformation by focusing on easing agritech services delivery to the end customer through administrative and policy support and through digital public infrastructure, including its “Agriculture Data Exchange” and “Agritech Sandbox”.

“Telangana’s experience highlights the need for governments to play an enabling role and consider non-financial yet high-impact areas to help scale agri-tech services. A focus on value chains is also needed to ensure efforts are focused, organized and outcome-oriented,” said Purushottam Kaushik, Head of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in India.

Initiated in 2022, the project is being implemented by Digital Green (in consortium with three agritech startups) with the support from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.