In alignment with its Country Digitization Acceleration (CDA) program, Cisco has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM) to bring the benefits of digital technology and data science to the farming communities in Kerala.
The first phase of this initiative will be rolled out in 15 Panchayats across Kannur district. Pursuant to the MOU, Cisco will build an Agri-Digital Infrastructure (ADI) Platform and set up Village Knowledge Centers (VKCs) for knowledge delivery and provide access to e-learning and advisory services to the farming and fishing communities in Kannur.
The comprehensive ADI Platform will provide access to a data store with complete farming data of paddy and prawns farms in the region along with land and farmer profile databases. This data store will run Cisco’s robust analytics and compute engines to extract insights on crop yields, weather patterns, plant disease patterns, soil quality, moisture content, forecasting and other data, and make it available to farmers and government officials through the VKC’s.
This Cisco ADI Platform will be supplemented by a custom-built Smart Agricultural Platform that uses IoT sensors, Non-IoT databases, Satellite/UAV Images to gather and relay real-time intelligence on soil content, moisture, weather conditions and other parameters. This platform will become a centralized knowledge hub which will provide data-based recommendations and insights to improve agriculture planning, reduce the risk of crop mortality and overall operational costs.
Through VKC’s, farmers can also access essential information on government policy updates, crop advisory services, market trends, rates and best practice videos. Farmers will also gain accessibility to government provisioned financing on a Content Management System through a mobile application and web portal. Apart from KSITM, the program will be supported by MIZONE (Malabar Innovation Zone), Government College of Engineering, Kannur, Department of Agriculture, Department of Fisheries and Local Panchayat with FPO’s.
