Here's how India can unlock the power of agricultural technology through private public partnerships

The Indian Government’s proposal to deliver hi-tech services to farmers through public private partnerships (PPPs), recently presented in its annual budget, is likely to offer critical support for the agricultural sector at a time when it is greatly needed.

The COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine has massively disrupted the global food system, putting huge pressure on agriculture-focussed countries like India to provide more sustainable options.

This is where agricultural technology could prove key. India has potential economic value of $50-65 billion through digital agriculture by 2025 translating to 23% addition to the current value of agricultural produce, according to a report by the country’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and McKinsey & Company.

Such investment can also have a significant impact beyond the economy. With 60% of India’s agricultural land being rain-fed, climate change poses a critical threat to food and agricultural systems.

So using agricultural technology and precision tools will be more important than ever to prevent hunger and eliminate food waste, and making these technologies more available to India's 130 million smallholder farmers can ensure greater financial resilience for them.

As new technologies present a major opportunity to transform agricultural systems, every stakeholder must play a role in realizing this potential. This is where public private partnerships (PPPs) will be vital.

Public private partnerships involve collaborations between a government agency and private sector body to finance, build and deliver a public asset or service. They combine the strength of the government’s mandate and ability to deliver public services, with the private sector responsible for investments, technology, products and distribution systems.

Under a PPP model for agriculture, a start-up ecosystem can drive emerging tech innovations and agile business models, while universities and research institutions can bring in domain level agricultural expertise and help validate the solutions for scaled deployments. In addition, the role of farmer producer organizations (FPOs) and non-governmental organizations are critical for building capacity and extending digital products and services to farmers.

Fundamentally, there are four pillars needed for successful public private partnerships in agriculture and how they are already being applied in India:

Some efforts are already taking shape. In 2021, India’s agriculture minister launched an initiative to enable a multi-stakeholder ecosystem named IDEA (India digital ecosystem for agriculture), which will open up infrastructure, data sets, academic and research expertise and innovative policies in order to partner with a huge private ecosystem.

Meanwhile, a private ecosystem consisting of agriculture products, banking and finance, technology and the services industry is already enabling its active agricultural technology start-up ecosystem.

The World Economic Forum has launched the AI4AI (AI for Agriculture Innovation) initiative and Food Innovation Hubs in collaboration with India’s agriculture ministry and multiple state governments with the intent of enabling and scaling PPPs for driving innovation across the agriculture ecosystem, establishing toolkits and frameworks through evidence based learning from pilots on ground.

Telangana state’s Saagu Bagu initiative, for example, aims to enable digital agriculture through PPP-based pilots aimed at transforming chili, groundnut and cotton crops, with an objective of evidence-based learning and subsequent scaling.

The state is offering its data ecosystem, field resources, academic and research institutions support and physical infrastructure, while private organizations will be providing technology and business innovations.

Other states including Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya and Karnataka have also been exploring various PPP approaches for hi-tech agriculture services. Madhya Pradesh has launched a Food Innovation Hub to explore PPP models for crop value chain transformation, while Meghalaya has been examining how to leverage technologies to transform the turmeric value chain.

To realize the opportunity of emerging technologies for agriculture and food systems much change is needed. For instance, it will be critical to develop a flexible framework/handbook for defining a PPP approach through multi-stakeholder consultations, which can then be adopted by states to meet specific priorities.

Working with academic and research institutions, a partnership approach for innovators should also be enabled to co-develop solutions and evolve a qualification approach, instead of the selection approach of current procurement models.

There should also be a time-framed approach for opening the agriculture data ecosystem with appropriate personal data protection measures, developed in partnership with states and industry partners. Overall, large agricultural players should work to enable a platform for pooling resources and funds to support the agricultural technology initiatives and scale them in PPP mode.

Since the budget announcement of hi-tech services for farmers through a PPP approach, there is a need of launching this initiative in mission mode. National and state governments can strengthen the dialogue with private stakeholder ecosystem and establish the PPP framework through consultations and evidence-based learning through pilots.

Overall, it is an excellent opportunity to revisit policy level support for innovation and for changing the landscape of agriculture.