The government is aiming to launch Bharat-VISTAAR (Virtually Integrated System to Access Agricultural Resources) a multilingual AI tool to help farmers gain access to a virtual classroom to learn best agricultural practices including crop planning, pests advisory, weather forecast, mandi prices and about various schemes.
The AI tool will be initially to be launched in Hindi and English and gradually become capable of responding in regional languages, aimed at boosting farm productivity through providing a range of advisory services on a real time basis, an official said.
The platform will also facilitate access to credit, insurance, and digital marketplaces.
The AI chat box will assist farmers through voice-based and text-based conversation in their own language
This would enable deployment of AI and digital tools across agriculture as part of the government’s attempt to modernize farm practices and deepen the outreach of extension services.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced the launch of Bharat – VISTAAR in her budget speech for FY27.
Unifying portals and advisories into one app
The AI tool would unify multiple portals at the centre and states, schemes, agri-advisories and farm practices recommended by Indian council for agricultural research and others into a single farmer-centric AI App,” an official said.
Often small farmers are deprived of modern farm practices, weather forecast and measures of improving productivity due to limited outreach of the government’s extetnon services, experts said.
The official said as the country has built digital public infrastructure such as Aadhaar, UPI and Agri-stack, on the similar line the AI tool has been built for the last-mile connect with the farmers for ensuring that agri-know how and services reach them at the real time in a simpler language.
The agriculture ministry has signed MoUs with Odisha, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have initiated work on pilots.
Integration with AgriStack and AI chatbots
The virtual tool aims to integrate with all initiatives and federal solutions via the network for access of farmers to up-to date information which includes leveraging AI enabled chatbots deployed at the ground level and subsequent integration with the ministry’s Agristack.
AgriStack consists of creating registries or databases associated with the agriculture sector – Geo-reference village maps, crop sown registry, and the farmers registry.
Under AgriStack, a farmers’ registry linked with land records is being developed, along with the collection of plot-wise crop data for each season. So far, 16 states have issued close to 84 million such IDs — also referred to as Kisan Pehchaan Patra. Officials said the target of issuing 90 million IDs would be met by the end of FY26.
“Digitalization of the existing agricultural extension system aims to expand its outreach substantially and enable every farmer to access high-quality advisory services on crop production, marketing, value and supply chain management and climate smart practices, weather advisories etc,” according to an agriculture ministry note.