Google is in the process of developing a digital agri-stack utilizing satellite data, beginning with a foundational layer to identify farm boundaries, according to a senior official. This base layer can be utilized for various applications such as enhancing subsidy payments, farm insurance, and farm loans, as per Manish Gupta, a senior director at Google DeepMind.
“We have constructed the initial model that employs satellite data analysis and can now pinpoint field boundaries based on usage patterns, identify the crops being cultivated, and more,” Gupta stated at the Mumbai Tech Week. The model draws inspiration from UIDAI’s Aadhar by assigning a unique ID to each farm, serving as the cornerstone of the “digital agri stack.”
Gupta highlighted that startups and other agri-tech entities can leverage this platform to develop solutions for facilitating loan approvals, crop insurance, and subsidies using the data generated. With 40% of the Indian population engaged in agriculture, the annual farm lending amounting to $550 billion presents a significant opportunity, much of which is currently serviced by informal lenders.
This initiative comes as the Indian banking sector seeks to streamline its agri-lending processes, with SBI considering the adoption of satellite imagery-based inputs to enhance efficiency, as revealed by Chairman C S Setty.
In addition, Gupta addressed the scarcity of content available in Indian languages and Google’s efforts to address this gap. Despite Hindi being spoken by 10% of the global population, it represents only 0.1% of online content. Through projects like “Vaani,” Google aims to collect speech data through voice recordings from over 700 districts to bridge this linguistic disparity.
The company has already gathered 14,000 hours of audio data from 80 districts encompassing 59 languages in the initial phase of the Vaani project. Gupta also emphasized the underappreciation of artificial intelligence in India, citing DeepMind’s groundbreaking work that contributed to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
As Google continues to expand its digital agri-stack and language inclusion initiatives, the tech giant aims to empower Indian agriculture and linguistic diversity through innovative solutions and data-driven insights.
