Satya Nadella on Monday revealed that small farmers in India have been using Microsoft's AI tools to predict weather, fight pests, and get better yields. In a video shared on X, the Microsoft CEO shared a "fantastic example" of AI's positive impact on agriculture.
"The one example I wanted to highlight was one of the small farmers who was part of the Baramati co-op... where you can take this powerful technology but make it have impact, where a small landowner is able to improve the yield of their land," Nadella said, referring to the Agricultural Development Trust (ADT) of Baramati in Maharashtra that has been using Microsoft AI technology with a select group of farmers in the drought-prone region who signed up for it.
Nadella said that the numbers the farmers shared in terms of reduction in chemicals, improvement in water usage and ultimately yield, was "phenomenal". The AI tools, he added, uses geospatial data, spatial temporal data from drones, satellites, and soil and help farmers understand the best practices for their lands in their vernacular languages. "That's the stitching together. It's pretty phenomenal," the Microsoft CEO said.
One of the farmers in Baramati who has benefitted from using Microsoft's AI tools is Suresh Jagtap. The 65-year-old has been tending to his sugarcane farm and relies heavily on AI to optimise growing conditions and work towards the ultimate goal of harvesting the crops when the sucrose content in the cane is at its peak.
The crop won't be harvested till November 2025, but Jagtap said he can already see the difference. “The growth is good,” he told Microsoft. “The leaves are greener and the height is more uniform.”
How does AI collect and process data?
Jagtap and a select group of other farmers who signed up for this experiment are aided by scientists at the nearby Agricultural Development Trust (ADT) of Baramati using Microsoft's AI technology.
There's a tall metal structure in his one-acre test plot which acts as a weather station. At the top are wind, rain, solar, temperature, and humidity gauges while at the bottom, sensors in the soil measure moisture, pH, and electrical conductivity as well as nutrients such as potassium and nitrogen. "The data is combined with satellite and drone imagery as well as historical data and analysed to generate simple daily alerts via a mobile app: Water more. Spray fertilizer. Scout for pests. A satellite map pinpoints exactly where each action is needed," Microsoft stated on its website.
AI project unveiled in 2024
It was at the farmers’ festival in January 2024 that ADT Baramati unveiled its AI project which included crops such as sugarcane, tomato, and ladies' finger to be grown with insights harnessed by AI. They called it the “Farm of the Future.”
The sugar cane test plot had yielded stalks that were taller and thicker – weighing 30 to 40 percent more at harvest – and yielding 20 percent more sucrose. The plot required less water and fertiliser, and the entire crop cycle was shorter – 12 instead of 18 months, Microsoft reported.
“We showed water-related data, weather data, nutrients, pH of the soil,” said Dr Yogesh Phatake, a microbiologist working on the project. “We got a very exciting response.”
About 20,000 farmers had signed up for the protect, and 1,000 among them were chosen for the first trial, focused on sugarcane that began in mid-2024.
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