MoAFW launches Wadhwani AI’s Krishi 24/7 to automate news monitoring

Wadhwani AI’s Krishi 24/7, an AI tool for automated news monitoring and analysis, was launched by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (MoAFW). Krishi 24/7 has been developed with a $1M support from Google.org.

The AI tool developed by Wadhwani AI addresses the need for an efficient mechanism to identify and manage agricultural news articles of interest to aid timely decision-making. It will aid the Directorate of Extension Division under MoAFW to identify relevant news, generate timely alerts, and take prompt action to protect farmers' interests and promote sustainable agricultural growth through improved decision-making.

The AI tool scans news articles in multiple languages and translates them into English. It extracts essential information from news articles, such as headline, crop name, event type, date, location, severity, summary, and source link, ensuring that the ministry receives timely updates on relevant events published on the web.

Krishi 24/7 offers: 

• Timely updates on relevant agricultural events
• Prompt action on critical matters with targeted alerts: News articles are shortlisted and dispatched to the relevant divisions immediately.
• Broader accessibility by identifying and processing news articles in regional languages and effectively translating them into English to overcome language barriers.
• Centralized news sourcing for easy comprehension and analysis by scanning multiple sources of information and consolidating relevant news articles with extracted variables in one centralized location.
• Data-driven decision-making with enhanced tracking and analytics. The AI solution improves tracking of responses from various divisions, allowing for efficient progress monitoring. It also provides insightful analytics through a dashboard, empowering data-driven decision-making within the ministry.

Associate Director (Ag), Wadhwani AI, JP Tripathi said, "We want to build AI solutions for existing challenges where news monitoring and validation have been manual and time-consuming. A similar event tracking and analysis solution for disease outbreaks has been successfully deployed by the institute with the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). By collaborating with the DA&FW and other central government bodies, we are dedicated to equipping them with effective tools that improve the information flow through enhanced data-driven decisions."

Launching the initiative, Secretary (A&FW) Manoj Ahuja said, "This news monitoring system will not just keep us informed but empower us to shape the narrative." In the spirit of continuous improvement, he further suggested that we remain open to enhancing this system as we move forward. As the world evolves, so should our tools and methods. "Let us work together to ensure that this news monitoring system becomes a dynamic force, adaptable to the changing landscape of information, and a valuable asset in our mission to better serve our farmers."

Joint Secretary (Extension) Samuel Praveen Kumar briefly explained about the functions of the solution which is intended to provide a near real time monitoring of the news articles on Agri ecosystem published online which will assist the DA&FW to identify news of interest and provide a comprehensive mechanism to shortlist events, create alerts, and take timely action.