|
Listen to this story
|
Bengaluru-based agritech startup Cropin Technology and Amazon Web Services (AWS) India Private Limited have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) focused on enabling Cropin to build an AI-powered solution to address the pressing issue of global hunger and food insecurity.
This initiative aims to help Cropin develop core data architecture, analytics, modeling, and simulation components that can aggregate global farmland data and broader climate intelligence within a single solution.
The solution will provide decision intelligence to governments, development agencies, and agri-businesses, and help them ensure food security for vulnerable populations.
It will also integrate satellite imagery with in-situ field images and remote data to improve agricultural analytics through scalable models.
These models will provide both micro (plot) and macro (regional/ global) insights and will be further analyzed by identifying patterns and anomalies in the production and quality of major crops across global regions.
Cropin’s AI, model building, data processing, and reporting will leverage AWS services such as Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that offers a choice of high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies; Amazon Q, a generative AI-powered assistant; Amazon QuickSight, which offers unified business intelligence at hyperscale; and AWS’s HPC infrastructure.
AWS will explore providing technical expertise to Cropin on its advanced compute services (HPC, ML/ Gen AI, IoT, geospatial), as well as industry insights from its agriculture, and sustainability specialists, to power Cropin’s platform.
The insights generated through the workloads will be integrated into Cropin’s open-source dashboard. They can be disseminated via a WhatsApp or an SMS-based alerting system for stakeholders, including farmers, field officers, governments, development agencies, and agribusinesses.
AWS will further support Cropin by exploring collaboration opportunities with research organisations and academic institutions such as Harvard Data Science Initiative (HDSI), to drive research and development in food security, climate-resilient agriculture, and food sustainability.
Recent estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations reveal a stark reality: between 691 and 783 million people faced hunger in 2022, reversing decades of progress. This figure represents an alarming increase of 122 million people compared to 2019, before the pandemic.
While technology alone cannot solve hunger, it is a crucial tool for strategic decision-making. It enables governments and organizations analyse insights emerging from models and simulations of systems as diverse as agriculture, trade, and climate, in order to develop and test holistic strategies to address food insecurity.
“Our work with Cropin showcases the power of advanced compute capabilities on the cloud to drive social and environmental impact. AWS’s generative AI, simulation, and data analytics technologies can help organisations like Cropin surface actionable and relevant insights from diverse data sets, and scale their solution globally to empower decision makers to reduce food insecurity,” said Shalini Kapoor, Director and Chief Technologist, AWS India Private Limited.
