New Delhi: In the past few years, especially from 2024 onwards, there has been a phenomenal shift of gears towards technology in agriculture. India has committed to building an agricultural system driven by state-of-the-art technology, accessible to millions of farmers in the country and tackling the barriers that have been posing risks to them. Our agricultural ecosystem hinges on the prosperity of the smallholder farmer. However, the unending challenges like price shocks, pest outbreaks, lack of social security, and advisory systems that work late, or are often out of context or inaccessible to the farmer, are shoving smallholders into the vicious circles of unproductivity, never-ending debt traps, and poverty. Climate change is only adding to their woes—erratic weather patterns, intensifying pests and diseases, and crop loss among a barrage of stressors that leave a smallholder farmer highly vulnerable.
India is home to more than 150 million farmers, of which more than 85 percent constitute smallholders— farmers with small or fragmented landholdings, or a farmer who works on a leased piece of land. We are living through a technological revolution that is allowing us to cash in on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address the challenges farmers face and close the systemic gaps at scale. The use of AI in agriculture is rapidly growing across the world. What was in 2024 a $4.7 billion industry is expected to surpass $30 billion by 2035.
Last year, in a first, India committed a whopping ₹28,170 million under the Digital Agriculture Mission, approved ₹142,350 million for additional digital agriculture schemes, and allocated ₹103,710 million to the IndiaAI Mission. This large-scale public investment will build sturdy data systems, digital infrastructure, and AI-driven decision-making solutions for agriculture, a monumental step towards the goal of Viksit Bharat 2047.
Technology and AI are, and will continue, addressing risks in agriculture on the production side, such as weather, pests, and advisory gaps. However, the farmer’s vulnerability does not end at the farm. The smallholder farmer, who often lacks bargaining power and is dependent on dozens of intermediaries, is in need to sell the secured produce at margins that cover production costs and help boost overall income.
Hence, access to reliable, fruitful markets remains critical. It determines whether a good harvest translates into income security or financial shock. In the absence of reliable, efficient market access, farming is bound to fail in improving livelihoods. In India, Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) have emerged as one of the most promising institutional responses to smallholder market hurdles, enabling farmers to aggregate produce, negotiate better prices, and engage with markets on more equal terms.
Strengthening the agricultural ecosystem relies significantly on strengthening the FPOs and leveraging technology and AI to do this at scale. This year, India achieved a major milestone by meeting its target of forming and registering 10,000 FPOs, a goal that was set in 2020.
Scores of FPOs continue to operate with limited resources, limited data, weak systems, and constrained access to capital, which restricts their ability to scale and serve their members effectively.
Digital tools and AI-enabled platforms are increasingly helping FPOs overcome these constraints. With better access to market insights, demand signals, and digital tools for buying and selling, FPOs are increasingly able to operate as real market players rather than existing merely as informal aggregators. Digital dashboards and applications are enabling FPOs to make smarter and number-driven decisions, helping them become viable businesses by allowing access to huge datasets in real time. We have seen that FPOs that have adopted technology are growing in membership by leaps and bounds, their prosperity trickling down to the farmer members.
However, the march towards the prosperity of a farmer appears to be longer than it seems. Innovations and technologies do exist; however, they exist in silos. The solutions are helping, but they are operating in fragments. A recent study published by the Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) highlights a bitter truth: in India, the agricultural innovation ecosystem remains fragmented, with technology testing, data, and validation processes scattered across multiple institutions without a unified platform.
The growing technology and India’s commitment to build a tech-driven ecosystem are both pointing towards a single opportunity, one north star: a unified ecosystem, where innovations are built, tested, and deployed together. The prospects of India’s agri-ecosystem are rooted in strong partnerships between state governments, research institutions, FPOs, and technology collaborators, who together shape how digital tools reach the last mile.
These partnerships will form the foundational cornerstone of our future. No single actor, especially in silos, can solve for scale, trust, and local relevance at once. Government partnerships are indispensable as they provide infrastructure and legitimacy. Private players bring innovation and execution, and similarly, community-based organisations ensure that solutions are rooted in context and the vivid realities farmers are living in. We need to turn innovations from isolated pilots into systems that work on the ground, and strive for a unified ecosystem.
Building a one-stop solution that can, in unison, address farmer- and FPO-facing challenges like access to government schemes and subsidies, financial institutions and service providers, coupled with advisory that is accessible, trusted, reliable, and climate-smart. The long-term opportunity lies in moving toward systems where farmers and FPOs can access advisory, credit, insurance, and markets through integrated platforms, rather than navigating fragmented schemes and disconnected tools.
The key to achieving this is that all critical technology remains interoperable, so that institutions, rather than building novel solutions, can access the ones already working, share knowledge, and build together. In other words, the technical infrastructure needs to remain open-source to make agricultural knowledge a shared resource rather than a competitive advantage. Models like Agricultural Model Context Protocol (AgMCP) will support such interoperability across tools and institutions, helping create a more open, collaborative digital environment where farmers, FPOs, governments, and service providers can all work from the same reliable foundation.
An integrated, unified agricultural ecosystem can move farmers from managing uncertainty to making informed choices and strengthen FPOs as viable market institutions. We need to translate technological progress into tangible income security and resilience for India’s smallholder farmers, through shared, collective action, because the prosperity of Indian agriculture lies in the prosperity of our smallholder farmers.
By Nidhi Bhasin, CEO, Digital Green India
At charcha 2025, India’s largest collaborative convening, a multitude of industry experts and partners converged to explore various topics. With 40+ sessions spanning across 6 immersive, livelihood-intersecting themes, supported by 30+ sector-leading co-hosts, charcha convened to collaborate towards the shared goal of Viksit and Inclusive Bharat by 2047.
charcha 2025, an initiative by the*spark forum, was held at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, from November 12–14, 2025. To know more, visit: charcha25.thespark.org.in