Students of IIT-G, NIT Silchar and DU develop mobile app to help farmers to manage crops

The application known as AgSpeak has been developed by the student group with a goal of optimizing the in-farm productivity through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the application will help the farmers in making decisions and managing farm activities by the click of a single button on their smartphone or computer.

The developers said the application is free for the small farmers.

AgSpert – an agri-tech startup, co-founded by Siddhartha Bora (NIT Silchar alumnus), CEO, Manik Mittal (IIT Guwahati student), COO, Akash Sharma (IIT Guwahati student), SDE, Nitin Chauhan (IIT Guwahati student), Cloud Systems Architect, Dhritiman Talukdar (NIT Silchar alumnus), SDE and Kookil Pran Goswami (Dibrugarh University alumnus), Hardware Developer, has developed the application which has been driven by hyper local crop data coming from satellite and smart IoT devices.

AgSpeak considers up to 20 local crop parameters which are key indicators of their health like temperature, rainfall, sunlight hours, soil health status, among others, to alert farmers about probable crop threats in advance and suggest best practices to tackle the incoming threat, hence optimizing the resources used and maximizing productivity.

AgSpeak co-founder Siddhartha Bora said that, they have been working in last one year in an AI-based application that will help farmers to predict many field operations in their farms.

“We have noticed that, in many cases when certain disease has occurred and applied of certain fertilizers, pesticides, they go with the recommend provided by someone who is not very expert in the field and that lease up to lot of cost for the farmers and secondly it has generated lot of carbon foot print because of excess of fertilizer and pesticides have used. We have provided all the necessary tools to our farmers that they can utilize in this modern era along with the use of digital technologies to optimize their field operations. AgSpeak is basically IoT plus AI integrated platform and we have developed a smart IoT device that collects very crucial environmental data like temperature, humidity, rainfall, soil moisture, leaf wetness etc. After collecting all these, it sends them to mobile app to the farmers where they can get the data of all environmental parameters and the farmers also get the advisory based on what could be the disease outcome, probable things that he needs to do,” Siddhartha Bora said.

Siddhartha also said that, the system will give alert to the farmers.

“This is done with the help of the satellite data that we collect and provide weather forecast. Our device data tell us what is the history of that disease that has been occurred in the location. We also provide many other additional services to the app. We have provided services like consultation with agriculture doctors, scientists mostly collaboration with Assam Agriculture University and Toklai Tea Research Institute and these scientists and agri doctors will help the farmers. We also provide soil testing service through our mobile app,” Siddhartha Bora said.

Manik Mittal – Chief Operating Officer of AgSpeak said that, by using the application, the farmers will be benefited in many ways.

“The device will capture the environmental data and send to our servers. So we analysis the data along with the weather data and we are trying to generate a prediction so that the farmers can use preventive measures well and advanced. We also connect the farmers with a pool of produce buyers,” Manik Mittal said. 

The app along with the IOT hardware has been tested for the past 3 months with 500 farmers and 2 tea estates. Some of the major breakthroughs by the algorithm were precise prediction of BLIGHT IN POTATO and TEA MOSQUITO BUG, along with WATER STRESS in winter crops.

These are major reasons of woes to farmers and small tea growers of Assam and cause lakhs in crop damages if not controlled in time.   

Major commercial users of the product include commercial plantation farms (tea, lemon orchards, grape vineyards).

The new Farm Bill 2020 is likely to boost formation of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs)/ Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) among general crop growers to work as a business as well, which is likely to increase adaptation of paid services that comes with the mobile app.

The developers have already provided hands on training in utilizing the full potential of the app to nearly 250 farmers.

IIT Guwahati Director Prof. T. G. Sitharam had launched AgSpeak on December 13 via video conferencing.

Prof. T. G. Sitharam said that, India is an agriculture country, but still 2 billion people didn’t have regular access of nutritious and sufficient foods in 2019 alone and the COVID-19 pandemic causes severe problem.

“To end this we need to double agriculture productivity in next 15 years. So, unless we use the technology and appropriate use of technology in agriculture sector this would be impossible. To meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), unless use of technology, we will not able to succeed. India aspires to become a US$ 5 trillion economy, and unless the younger generation of today’s India don’t stand up we cannot take on this challenge. I’m immensely proud of our students and wish them all the best for the immense contribution they are making for the farmers of our country. I am very proud of you the students that you are not seeking the jobs, trying to create jobs,” Prof. T. G. Sitharam said.

(Reporting by Heamta Kumar Nath)