Devesh Chaturvedi, Agriculture Secretary. Photo Courtesy: Bijoy Ghosh
Union Agriculture Secretary Devesh Chaturvedi said that farmers have started taking farming decisions based on the government’s weather forecasts because the accuracy has increased after the use of Artificial Intelligence. The government now plans to include more areas such as market prices and arrivals in the advisory to help improve farmers’ decision-making abilities.
Addressing a session at the India AI Impact Summit, Chaturvedi said: “We used 100 years of data from the India Meteorological Department on a model to predict the monsoon for the next one week and one month, which the Google CEO had earlier mentioned about weather prediction. Those predictions were quite accurate.
“We received feedback that farmers made their decisions on sowing and irrigation based on those predictive model forecasts. Now, we will expand these forecasts to include advice on market conditions, weather conditions to help improve farmers’ decision-making ability. This will help them increase productivity and reduce costs.”
essential items
Sources said the agriculture ministry had tried using AI to predict prices of essential commodities like onion, potato and tomato, as recommended by the Dalwai committee on doubling farmers’ income. However, it could not be launched because there were discrepancies in historical data at the micro level, sources said.
But experts believe that this is a politically risky decision as the forecast would be coming from the government or its agency and in case of a 20-30 per cent difference, it could lead to controversy.
Chaturvedi also said that Bharat-Vistaar is currently disseminating weather advisories, crop advisories of ICAR, pest management, market information on produce traded in mandis and central government schemes.
Benefits of AI
Asking why AI is important in agriculture, he explained that it will help in removing “digital red tape” as even within the ministry, each section/department used to have a separate means of information dissemination. He said that farmers face a lot of difficulties in visiting each website or app to get information.
Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan inaugurated the ‘Bharat Vistar’ scheme, farmer-centric AI hackathon and unveiled the Agriculture Fund AI strategy roadmap at an event in Jaipur, Rajasthan on February 17. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced ‘India expansion’ in her budget speech on February 1.
Describing the AI-based Bharat-Vistaar launch as the first phase, Chaturvedi had earlier said it would be linked to Agristack where all the data is being stored from farmer identity cards. In the next six months, farmers will be able to get guidance and solutions to their agricultural problems through AI technology by calling the helpline number from their registered mobile. Their data like land size, crop grown, fertilizer purchased details will be available which will be automatically accessed by the system when calling from the registered mobile and queries will be answered accordingly.
The India extension is currently launched in Hindi and English, but will gradually cover all regional languages, with the aim of covering an additional nine languages in the next six months.
It provides information about mandi rates, weather information, various central schemes, status of farmers’ applications if applicable in any scheme, ‘package of procedures’ developed by ICAR scientists. Apart from the helpline number, it can be directly downloaded as an Android app or accessed through the website.
Published on February 20, 2026
