BHUBANESWAR: Founder and co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation, Bill Gates on Wednesday visited Krushi Bhawan and interacted with the officials of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment department.
Gates visited Krushi Samiksha Kendra, India’s first centralised monitoring system in agriculture that was inaugurated by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. The department demonstrated use cases enabled for farmers in the state through digital systems including pest management, digital extension, on-call artificial insemination, and scheme delivery.
Principal secretary Arabinda Padhee said Odisha has emerged as a pioneer in digital public infrastructure in agriculture and is on track to launch one of the first comprehensive technology stacks for agriculture, livestock, and fisheries.
Vice president at Samagra governance Utkarsh Vijay, who accompanied Gates, said, Odisha has been on the fore-front of innovation with regards to leveraging technology for agriculture. The AMA Krushi AI chatbot created by the department is based on an open source architecture called Bharat Sah’AI’yak which helps in providing personalised and contextualised answers to farmers in real time in Odia language, he added.
Gates also interacted with two successful farmers in the state. He met the chief minister at Naveen Niwas and discussed the technology driven farmer empowerment initiatives, several welfare initiatives like Jaga Mission, Mission Shakti, Odisha school transformation, BSKY and healthcare transformation. The Odisha government has been partnering with the foundation since 2017 for improving farmers’ income, nutrition security, and climate resilience in the state.