Maharashtra cabinet clears AI policy for agriculture
Maharashtra cabinet on Tuesday cleared the MahaAgri — AI policy 2025-29 to usher in the use of Artifical Intelligence in agriculture focusing on setting up different agro data sets, geospatial intelligence, standardisation of agro-food safety, real time guidance to farmers and providing agriculture related necessary information. An Agro data exchange (A-DeX) linking government and private data sets as well as other stakeholders will also be set up.
Under the policy, projects using AI aimed at agriculture will get approval from State Level Scrutiny Committee (SLSC). The state level technical committee will examine the feasibility of the project including government help, guidance and recommendation for financial aid. The primary evaluation of the project will be undertaken by the AgriAI cell. Competitions such as Hackathon will also be arranged to invite projects addressing various issues faced in the agriculture sector.
The A-DeX, will connect the government data sets such as Agristack, Maha agritech, Mahavedh and other related to storage etc and the private data sets including information on export data, market intelligence, information based on satellites, supply chain, climate based data, financial services, agro-tech platforms, etc. Other stakeholders such as startups, industry, farmer producer organisations, research institutes and government will also be linked.
'A virtually integrated system to access agricultural resources, also known as Maha VISTAAR AI will be developed under the new policy,' said an official from the Agriculture department. Under the system, by using digital modes such as chatbot, interactive voice response system (IVRS), web portal. The VISTAAR will be an open network on information related to agriculture.
The government has made a financial provision of Rs 500 crore for the first three years into the implementation of the policy. A review of it will be taken after three years.
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