This article is part of: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
Subsistence farmers in countries like India battle extreme weather and financial desperation to support their families.
The AI for Agriculture Innovation initiative held workshops with farmers in India to find out how to help them access the AI tools they need to farm more efficiently and earn more.
The initiative transformed the chili farming for many in Khammam district, India with bot advisory services, AI-based quality testing, and a digital platform to connect buyers and sellers. Participating farmers reported that they doubled their income.
Krishna, a smallholding farmer, diligently cultivates his half-hectare plot in Telangana, India, every day. For this, he earns $120 per month—just enough to meet his family's basic needs.
But Krishna must also contend with unpredictable monsoons, frequent droughts, pest infestations, and diminishing yields. He must battle the impacts of changing climate patterns and soil health. With no access to a bank, Krishna is also forced to use local loan sharks for finance, paying crippling interest rates. Even then, the essential resources he buys with this money – such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticides – aren’t always available.
Post-harvest, Krishna faces another hurdle: 40% wastage in other parts of the supply chain. Logistics, warehousing and accessing a market at which to sell their produce also present significant challenges for many farmers like Krishna.
Strict quality requirements set by traders and processors are also very difficult to meet. These farmers are then trapped in a cycle of subsistence farming because low revenues leave them with less to invest in the next crop cycle. New technologies that make this work easier – precision farming, digital market access or drones, for example – remain out of reach for most farmers like Krishna. They can’t afford the equipment, have limited access to technology and may not have the time to spare to adjust their processes to adopt them properly.
The dynamics of market supply and fluctuating prices only add to these challenges because farmers like Krishna often find themselves losing out when prices fall or demand drops.
Like the other roughly 125 million smallholding farmers in India, Krishna faces these daunting challenges to support himself and his family. For these farmers, agriculture is a high-stakes gamble marked by big risks and minimal returns. Thousands of farmers in India have committed suicide, reflecting financial desperation and weather-induced challenges affect these people.
And Krishna's story is not unique to India either. An estimated 500 million smallholder farms in the developing world support almost 2 billion people and produce about 80% of the food consumed in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Addressing the plight of Krishna and his counterparts around the world to create a more sustainable and equitable future for smallholding farmers will require a holistic, scalable approach that encompasses financial inclusion and climate resilience.
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