India Struggles To Scale Digital Farm Tech Despite Pilot Success, Officials Say

India faces significant challenges in scaling up digital and geospatial technologies for agriculture despite successful pilot programmes, a senior government official said on Wednesday, citing the country's diverse climate and fragmented landholdings as key obstacles.

"While pilot projects in horticulture and other sectors have shown success, scaling these initiatives across India's diverse climate, soil, and landholding patterns continues to be a challenge," senior Puducherry government official Padma Jaiswal said at the GeoSmart India 2025 conference in New Delhi.

Jaiswal emphasised the need for bottom-up implementation, youth engagement and trust-building to ensure technology reaches farmers effectively, an official statement said.

India has launched several digital agriculture initiatives, including a nationwide soil resource mapping programme and the Soil Health Card scheme, which aim to provide farmers with data-driven insights on soil health and nutrient management.

Milind Wadodkar, chief soil survey officer at the Soil and Land Use Survey of India, said these programmes were building a robust decision support system for agriculture.

He highlighted upcoming initiatives including KrishiBIS, PMKSY WDC 3.0 and Agri Stack, which integrate geospatial tools for site-specific interventions.

The conference panel explored satellite-based applications for crop monitoring and precision farming, with representatives from state space agencies, farmer cooperatives and agri-tech companies discussing how to bridge gaps in the agriculture value chain.

Panellists said that while India has made progress in creating a digital agricultural ecosystem, the next phase requires scaling across diverse crops, strengthening supply chains and ensuring innovations reach smallholder farmers who form the backbone of the Indian agriculture.