India’s next agricultural revolution will be powered by artificial intelligence, Jitendra Singh, Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, said while addressing the inaugural session of the Global Conference on AI in Agriculture and Investor Summit 2026 in Mumbai.
Positioning AI as the central pillar of future farm policy, research and investment architecture, Jitendra Singh said artificial intelligence offers scalable solutions to structural challenges that have historically constrained farm productivity, including erratic weather patterns, information asymmetry and fragmented markets. He observed that while these challenges are well known, AI now provides a prescription that can scale effectively.
He highlighted that even a 10 percent productivity gain for 600 million farmers across the Global South could represent one of the largest poverty reduction opportunities of the century. Framing agriculture as a strategic growth sector rather than a legacy domain, he linked the AI push to the ₹10,372 crore India AI Mission, which is building sovereign compute capacity, curated datasets and startup infrastructure at scale.
Jitendra Singh referred to BharatGen, India’s government owned large language model ecosystem, which has launched Agri Param, a domain specific agriculture model functioning in 22 Indian languages. The platform enables farmers to receive advisory support in their native language, strengthening linguistic inclusion. He said this approach ensures that AI speaks directly to farmers in Marathi, Bhojpuri, Kannada and other regional languages, enhancing accessibility and trust.
The Minister said the Department of Science and Technology is supporting an interoperable India AI Open Stack framework so that agri AI solutions developed anywhere in the country can seamlessly integrate into a national digital architecture. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation is funding deep tech and AI research in collaboration with IITs, IISc and ICAR, with a focus on agriculture applications.
He pointed to the use of drones and satellite mapping to strengthen Soil Health Cards and the Swamitva Mission by providing verified land and soil data. Climate intelligence systems integrating Earth Sciences and AI are being deployed to enhance early warning mechanisms, allowing farmers to plan proactively rather than react to crises. Biotechnology, he added, will play a crucial role in developing resilient and disease resistant crops, enabling early asymptomatic detection of pest and plant diseases and advancing a circular crop economy.
Highlighting the economic potential, Jitendra Singh said India’s 140 million farm holdings, predominantly small and marginal, could together unlock an estimated ₹70,000 crore in annual value. He explained that if AI enabled advisories help each farmer save even ₹5,000 annually through improved input timing, pest prediction and better market linkages, the aggregate benefit would be transformative.
He cited Maharashtra’s ₹500 crore MahaAgri AI Policy 2025–29 as an example of state level innovation and said the Centre would align and amplify such initiatives. He noted that the Union Budget 2026–27 has proposed Bharat VISTAAR, a multilingual AI tool integrating AgriStack portals and ICAR’s agricultural practices package with AI systems to provide customised advisory support and reduce farm risk.
The Minister stressed that the focus is on small, purpose built AI models trained on Indian soil types, climate zones and crop varieties, which can function effectively even in low connectivity rural areas through mobile phones and farm equipment. He called for a federated national architecture in which agri digital public infrastructures such as MahaAgriX evolve into a National Agri Data Commons.
Jitendra Singh invited stakeholders to collaborate on a proposed National Agri AI Research Network, envisaged as a partnership between the Department of Science and Technology, state governments, ICRISAT, ICAR and global institutions. The objective is to build India specific foundational datasets covering crops, soils and climate conditions.
Making a direct appeal to investors, he described agri AI as the largest untapped productivity market in the world and urged patient capital to support scalable platforms instead of isolated pilot projects. He said the success of the conference would be measured not by presentations but by how many pilots evolve into platforms and how many farmers are able to take better informed decisions in the coming year.
Concluding his address, Jitendra Singh said AI in agriculture must be practical and outcome driven. Farmers do not need artificial intelligence for its own sake, he said, but for tangible improvements in productivity, income and resilience. He reaffirmed India’s intention to act not as a passive recipient but as a co architect of global agri AI frameworks, shaping technology solutions rooted in local realities and scalable across the Global South.
