India’s agriculture sector is a global powerhouse, characterized by its massive scale, vast arable land, diverse agro-climatic zones and rich biodiversity. These strengths have propelled the country to become one of the world’s leading producers of crops such as rice and wheat. However, farmers face significant challenges – from erratic monsoons, severe droughts and unseasonal rains compounded by El Niño, to pests and diseases that destroy an estimated 30 percent of crops annually. More than 80 percent of India’s estimated 150 million farming households are smallholder farmers operating on less than two hectares of land, which limits economies of scale, sets obstacles to the wider adoption of advanced technologies and could widen a systemic gap between large commercial agricultural operations and the bulk of the farming population.

Providing India’s farmers with free, real-time and personalized agricultural intelligence at scale could transform the country’s agriculture.

This vision is at the heart of an ambitious program called Annam.AI, which aims to build a nationwide agricultural intelligence backbone based on open data that enables precision agriculture and fosters climate resilience. This would provide India’s farmers hyperlocal, AI-powered advisories that integrate crop intelligence, real-time microclimate data and multilingual engagement tools. Annam.AI (Alliance for Next-gen Nourishment through Agriculture Modernization, and denoting “food” in Sanskrit) is backed by the Government of India through the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, with global technology partners such as Google, and is driven by IIT Ropar, a premier engineering and technology university in Punjab that is part of the Indian Institutes of Technology system.

Syngenta, a global leader in agricultural innovation with a long-standing presence in India, announced Tuesday it has signed a memorandum of understanding to be a strategic partner in the Annam.AI program, at an event in Nice, France, attended by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and France’s President Emmanuel Macron. Syngenta will leverage its R&D and agronomic expertise in building accurate crop health, pest forecasting and heat stress models.

“At Syngenta we're creating breakthroughs for farmers in every field, to deliver higher yields with lower impact,” said Jeff Rowe, Syngenta Group’s chief executive officer. “Annam.AI presents a unique opportunity to contribute to a transformative, digital foundation for Indian agriculture that will benefit more than 600 million people in this country. We are deeply honored to work with many talented and committed people in India’s government and universities, as well as with other innovation leaders in fulfilling this vision.”