Agritech, short for agricultural technology, is the software and the machines that help farmers and the businesses around them: lenders, insurers, seed and chemical companies, and the buyers of crops. In India, most farmers work small plots. Most Indian farms are smaller than two hectares, which is about five acres. So agritech in India has to suit a farmer with one phone and very little cash.
Here is a typical season. A farmer grows cotton on five acres near Warangal, in Telangana. Before sowing in June, she needs a crop loan of about ₹1.5 lakh for seed, fertiliser and weedkiller. But she has almost no credit history that a bank can read. A credit score is built from a person's past loans and repayments, and she has had few loans. What the bank can see is her field. Crop monitoring software reads satellite images of the field from the last five seasons. It shows that cotton was sown there every year, and that the crop grew normally in four of the five years. The bank's underwriting, its decision on whether to lend and how much, uses that record, and the loan is approved.
With the money, she buys seed from a local dealer. The seed company sold that seed to a distributor, and the distributor sold it to the dealer. Agri-input channel management software records each of these sales. So the seed company knows what sold where, and which dealer has earned a rebate, which is money paid back for selling a target amount.
In August, the cotton leaves start to curl and show holes. She records a voice message in Telugu to an AI farming assistant on her phone. It asks her for a photo, names the most likely pest and tells her what to spray and how much for each acre. It also tells her to confirm the pest with the local agriculture officer before she buys an expensive chemical. An AI model can give wrong advice with full confidence, which is called AI hallucination, so this check matters.
In September, weeds grow between the rows. A contractor brings a tractor fitted with a precision sprayer. Its cameras pick out each weed, and its nozzles spray only those spots. So she pays for far less weedkiller than a spray over the whole field would need.
Several of the tools that reach small farmers are digital public goods: open software and data that anyone may use for free, often built by nonprofits together with governments. Each tool must save or earn the farmer more than it costs, on just five acres.