Bengaluru IISc to create Agricultural Data Exchange for farmer services in Telangana

The Agricultural Data Exchange (ADEx) is expected to enable more credit options, better insurance products, improved seed tracking and more targeted farming advisories

The IISc said the partnership would enable a variety of new services for the farmers ranging from more credit options, better insurance products, improved seed tracking and more targeted farming advisories (Express photo)

The Telangana government and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc)-Bengaluru have signed an agreement to create India’s first Agricultural Data Exchange (ADEx) to make public and private sector data available for companies to create new farmer services, it was announced Monday.

Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary (IT) of Telangana, said, “Data is the key to enabling new services for our farmers and improving the agriculture sector. With ADEx, we hope to enable a new ecosystem of application developers who will now have access to a best-of-breed data platform to create applications targeted at bringing technology-driven change to the sector. We are thrilled to collaborate with IISc in this endeavor.”

The IISc said the partnership would enable a variety of new services for the farmers ranging from more credit options, better insurance products, improved seed tracking and more targeted farming advisories. “ADEx will be piloted in Telangana with a select set of partners by early 2023, followed by a production rollout within the same state during that year. Both public and private sector data shall be made available through ADEx and a variety of startups and more established companies will be encouraged to build these new farmer services. It is expected that the ADEx will then be made available to other states and broadly deployed across the nation,” it said in a statement.

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ADEx will be built on the lines of India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX), which was created within IISc in partnership with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in 2021. “The IUDX is an open-source platform that enables higher operational efficiency in city administration by facilitating data exchange between various civic bodies, municipal departments, application developers, and relevant data consumers,” the IISc statement read.

G Rangarajan, director of the IISc, said, “A nation where the majority of people make their livelihood from agriculture needs to apply its considerable technical firepower to this sector. With the ADEx initiative, the IISc is pleased to be a part of that effort and we have high hopes that this will help the farmers of Telangana and eventually the nation.”

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