No App For Empathy: What AI Can - And Cannot - Do For Indian Farmers

When doctors, engineers, or Bollywood actors die by suicide, the national media springs into a frenzy. There are hashtags, televised debates, and urgent calls to address mental health. Elections have even been fought on the back of such tragedies. But when tens of thousands of Indian farmers take their lives - often by swallowing pesticide or hanging themselves from the very trees they once cultivated - the discourse shrinks to a single refrain: loan waivers.

Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being championed as a magic bullet. Policymakers, bureaucrats, and corporates in Delhi are eager to showcase its potential in agriculture. But on the ground, in places like drought-prone Mann Taluka in Maharashtra, most farmers are still struggling to access something as basic as drip irrigation. Do they even know what AI is? Unlikely. But the future, we are told, is “smart.”

The same disconnect was visible during the much-celebrated International Year of Millets in 2024. While Delhi embraced the slogan and global brands joined the trend, our farmers actually growing millets had never heard of it. That’s the pattern. Policies are made in air-conditioned rooms and fail in sun-scorched fields.

The divide is not just digital - it is philosophical. You cannot “tech” your way out of a crisis you have never taken the time to understand.

That said, there is room for cautious optimism. Through grassroots work with farmers, I have seen the promise of AI-powered weather stations and soil sensors - let’s call them AI-WSS. These tools can support water conservation, improve climate forecasting, and reduce dependence on chemical inputs.

Consider horticultural crops like grapes and pomegranates. Traditional irrigation methods require 500-1000 mm of water. With AI-WSS, this can be reduced to 250 mm - cutting both water use and input costs. Even sugarcane, one of the thirstiest crops, has shown improvements when AI tools guide fertilization and irrigation.

If you want to make AI relevant in rural India, don’t start with algorithms. Start with justice. Technology cannot be reduced to a product for sale. It must be embedded within a public good ecosystem that prioritizes decentralized decision-making, farmer participation, and grounded policy reform.

What could this look like?

. Subsidies for AI-WSS that are targeted, equitable and reach smallholders, not just agritech companies.

. AI-WSS pilots are being tested in sugarcane through cooperative factories, but other crops - soybeans, pulses, vegetables - also need access to such tools.

. Reimagine Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) as facilitators of knowledge, training, and climate-smart tools and technologies and not just distributors of chemical inputs.

. Climate-tech finance must reach farmers on the ground, not just remain in startup boardrooms and climate conference brochures.

Banks - rural, cooperative, and commercial - should be encouraged to finance soil sensors and knowledge systems, not just tractors.

Grassroots innovators like Mann Deshi Foundation are already bridging the gap - offering soil testing, agronomy advice, climate education in schools, biogas units, and access to AI-WSS - their work must be studied, supported and scaled.

Take the case of Raghu, a farmer I work with in Mhaswad. He’s hardworking, couldn’t finish school, and now wants to invest in his daughter’s education. But he knows that sticking to traditional methods won’t get him there. When Mann Deshi installed AI-WSS on his 2.5 acre pomegranate farm as a pilot, he was intrigued - but hesitant.

“Who will fix it when it breaks?”

“Who will tell me how to read these numbers?”

“Who do I call when I’m confused by the readings?”

All valid questions - and ones echoed in every village I visited. Technology alone couldn’t answer them. But Mann Deshi’s field agronomists could. They showed up weekly, explained the data in the local language, and helped farmers interpret what it meant for planting, watering, and harvesting. Over time, the tools became less intimidating. They became tools Raghu could trust.

Today, Raghu teaches his 12-year-old daughter, Nandini, how to check the rainfall forecast on the app. She now thinks agriculture is “cool” because it involves technology, not just toil. That shift in pride is vital if we want the next generation to stay in farming.

As part of this vision, I’m also working with the government to introduce agri-skills into school curricula - so that girls like Nandini need not migrate to cities in search of work. As you read this, our pilot is already underway.

When we think of farmers, we’ve been taught to think of suicides. Of poverty. Of grief. But look closely and you’ll find another story. In drought-hit belts of Maharashtra, I know farmers who once stood in lines for loan waivers now walking through their orchards with pride. Women farmers who speak not just of yields, but of weather patterns and pH levels. Daughters who check the forecast on an app in one hand and sow seeds with the other. These are not miracles. They are partnerships. This did not happen for them. It happened with them.

Because, when we stop delivering to farmers from the top, and instead walk with them in the field, they show us what’s possible - even on parched land.

Karan Sinha is the Founder of the Mann Deshi Centre for Climate Resilient Agriculture and has been recognised as an Emerging Climate Leader by ORF America. He focuses on developing inclusive climate solutions for India’s rural farming communities.

news