Vodafone India Foundation, the CSR arm of Vi, in partnership with Nokia has deployed a Smart Agriculture solution that aims at improving the productivity of farmers in India. The pilot project being implemented across 100 locations in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra will be benefitting over 50,000 farmers in the region by enhancing their productivity and income.
The SmartAgri project aims to enhance the livelihoods of small farmers through sustainable farming approaches, deployment of IoT solutions and by improving their access to information, using technology.
This socially relevant project is in line with the Government’s vision of inclusive growth. It has a huge potential for replication and scale up of this technology across the country.
To demonstrate the impact of technology in transforming agricultural practices in India, Vi CSR chose the agri-heartlands of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, and on-boarded Nokia as the IoT solutions provider, and Solidaridad for field implementation.
Talking about the program, P. Balaji, Chief Regulatory & Corporate Affairs Officer, Vodafone Idea Limited said, “Vi CSR is committed to leveraging technology strengths to create social impact through sustainable solutions. Smart crop management using Smart IoT and AI based solutions is transforming the prevalent agricultural practices into more ‘intelligent’ ones enabling farmers with smart decision making and helping them improve production and crop quality through better utilization of resources. Our SmartAgri project is unique as it brings an entire ecosystem of stakeholders such as Nokia for its innovative technology, Solidaridad for project management, and also green experts and researchers from University – all under one roof, to positively impact the lives of farmers in India.”
As part of this project, over 400 sensors have been deployed over 100,000 hectares of farmland to collect various data points which are then analyzed by a cloud-based and localized Smart Agriculture app. The app provides local language support as well as weather forecast and irrigation management information. The sensors generate insights that is helping to improve soy and cotton crop yields.
Crop management through WING can include smart irrigation, smart pesticide control, and proactive information sharing frameworks on crops and weather, as well as a platform for commodity exchange. The use case can also employ Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) technology or drones instead of traditional sensors for crop management.
Ankur Bhan, Head of Nokia WING Business, at Nokia, said, “Our mission for WING is to shape the future of agriculture and other industries, to create a smarter and more connected world. Together with Vi CSR, our managed service offering will help an initial 50,000 farmers and their families, with the aim of rolling out the solution across India.”
Smart Agriculture is a leading use case that India is exploring in the 5G era. The complete end-to-end solution from Nokia WING is supported by deep domain expertise and an agriculture partner eco-system.
