IIT Madras, Agriculture Ministry to partner on project VISTAAR to empower farmers

Chennai: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras on Thursday announced a collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare on Project VISTAAR, which seeks to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the agricultural extension system through digitalisation.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed recently between the Agriculture Ministry and IIT Madras enables them to enrich the VISTAAR platform (Virtually Integrated System to Access Agricultural Resources) with information about start-ups in the agriculture and allied sectors.

This would enable farmers and other stakeholders in agriculture and allied sectors to be aware of the capabilities and offerings that startups have and easily access them.

“Agriculture forms the backbone of India’s social and economic rubric. Ensuring a strong agriculture sector therefore becomes a major policy imperative. Start-ups have an important role to play in bringing innovation across the value chain in the agriculture and allied sectors,” said Prof. Thillai Rajan A., Head, the Centre for Research on Start-ups, IIT Madras.

“The startup information platform developed by the Centre for Research on Startups and Risk Financing at IIT Madras along with its incubatee startup YNOS Venture Engine has information about 12,000 start-ups that are connected to the agriculture and farming sectors. This collaboration would bring this rich information within the easy reach of the farmer and contribute to the effectiveness of extension services of the Department of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare significantly,” Rajan added.

Digitalisation of the existing extension system will expand its outreach substantially and enable every farmer to access high-quality advisory services on crop production, marketing, value, and supply chain management.

The advisory services will also provide information about all government schemes related to agriculture and allied sectors including rural development from which the farmers can be benefited.

The process of digitalisation augments the current agricultural extension system by providing timely, contextual, and accurate information and advisories to farmers in agriculture and allied sectors.

“Innovative technologies of agri-startups contribute towards making agriculture sustainable and climate resilient and therefore connecting the technology of agri-startups with farmers through extension is critical from an access and adoption perspective. The collaboration with IITM would surely pave the way for achieving this objective through VISTAAR DPI for Agriculture Extension,” said Samuel Praveen Kumar, Joint Secretary (Extension), Ministry of Agriculture.

–IANS