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India’s top Agriculture Informatics Professor Moni Madaswamy gave a thought-provoking talk on the use of informatics and new IT technologies in Agriculture on the second day of the International Food Safety and Food Quality Conference at the Kazakh Agrotechnical Research University (KATRU) in Astana.

The topic of Professor M. Moni’s talk was: Food Security in a Digital Economy: Need for Strategic Agricultural Informatics Research and Development in Higher Educational Institutions.”

Professor M. Moni is Professor Emeritus & Chairman

Centre for Agricultural Informatics and e-Governance Research Studies (CAIRS) & Centre for Agribusiness and Disaster Management Studies (CADMS)

Shobhit Institute of Engineering and Technology Meerut.

(Deemed to be University)

The Indian Professor praised Kazakhstan’s strides in the digitalization of its economy and the wide use of technologies in Kazakh society.

He said Kazakhstan has tremendous potential in agriculture and it should start using new information technologies in the agricultural sector.

Using digital technologies such as blockchain, IoT, Artificial Intelligence (ML & DL), data analytics, GIS, smartphones, Internet, Cloud Computing, and Language computing in agriculture will help farmers, increase productivity, and strengthen the economy.

Professor M. Moni gave examples of different projects in India where farmers in 100,000 villages were trained to use IT in agriculture. He said India would facilitate the farming community by progressively empowering them through the newly evolving Agricultural Informatics discipline.

Professor M. Moni said that collaborative farming is defined as “two or more farmers working together” in a formal arrangement for their mutual benefit.

He said that the “Future of Farming” will be mostly based on extensive research and development in the areas of Genomics, Robotics, Informatics and Nanotechnology (GRIN), and such intensification is being witnessed now.

During his talk, Professor M. Moni also explained the term ‘Smart Agribusiness’ saying it meant the applications of digital technologies to improve the efficiency of all the stakeholders in the interrelated and interdependent value chains in agriculture.

The goal of Smart Agribusiness is to leverage the recent surge in technologies (such as blockchain, the internet of Things, artificial intelligence, remote sensing technologies, cloud computing, and mobile internet) to reduce information and financial asymmetry across the agricultural value chain. Through the use of these technologies, Smart Agribusiness can increase farmers’ access to inputs, information, finance, and knowledge.

Smart Agribusinesses can have a democratizing effect across the agricultural sector. They have the potential to positively impact the livelihoods of all those involved in the agriculture sector, irrespective of societal divides (e.g. gender, age, and economic status among others).

Professor Moni said that it is professed that an Agricultural System (Research System, Input System, Production System, and Output System) built-in with effective ICT-enabled “Information Systems”, is capable of delivering services in Indian local languages, for enhancing agricultural production, productivity, and income rise.

He recommended the adoption of Industry 4.0 in Agriculture (Agriculture 4.0) and said that it paves the way forward for collaborative farming.