Udit Poddar, Data Scientist at SocialCops, gave this presentation on " Data-Driven Decision Making in Indian Agriculture: the Present and the Future" at the Fifth Elephant, 2016

1. AGRICULTURE IN INDIA
Udit Poddar

3. THE PROBLEMS
IN AGRICULTURE
IN INDIA

4. • High Rice and Wheat
Production
• Extremely High Maternal
Mortality, Infant Mortality Rates
• High Malnutrition

5. Of India’s population is
under-nourished
15%
194.6
million

6. India has a Pulse Problem
Agriculture production trends in India (million tonnes)
Rice Wheat Pulses

7. Irrigation
availability
High yielding
disease resistant
seeds
Crop rotation
literacy
Accessibility to
markets
Pulses need more water
Pulses are more
susceptible to diseases
Training & educating
farmers
Showcase the market to
farmers
What can fix it?

8. HOW DO YOU
SOLVE THESE
PROBLEMS
USING DATA?

9. 1.26 bn
36
States & UTs
677
Districts
6000+
Sub-districs
6 lac+
Villages
INDIA IS A
COMPLEX
COUNTRY

10. & IS EXTREMELY
DATA RICH
OPEN
PUBLIC
DATA

11. Number
of land
holdings
Size of
land
holdings
Dispersal
of
operated
area
Tenancy
Status
Sources
of
irrigation
Irrigation
status
Cropping
Intensity
Crops
Data Acquisition
Data lying in government
servers
Agriculture Census
Data and challenges
Data Curation
Single file for each
geography and crop

12. Input Survey
Data and challenges
Data Acquisition
Data lying in difficult
government servers
Data Curation
Single file for each
geography and crop

13. Challenges and Solutions
Data Curation
Available in PDF files or
poorly formatted multiple
Excel files
• India’s population to
cross China’s by
2022
• Population to grow
up to 1.7b by 2050
• PDF parsing using
image recognition
• Data cleaning using
pattern recognition
• Scalable scripts for
automating
thousands of filesIntegrated Village wise Reports of disease
outbreak in India
Bi-weekly

14. Challenges and Solutions
• India’s population to
cross China’s by
2022
• Population to grow
up to 1.7b by 2050
Data Stitching
• Phonetic Matching
• Fuzzy Logic Matches
15%
The match we got the
first time we matched
Census Village Names
to DISE Village Names

15. 15
209 Final Indicators
Data Sources.
31
2k+ variables

16. • India’s population to
cross China’s by
2022
• Population to grow
up to 1.7b by 2050

17. • India’s population to
cross China’s by
2022
• Population to grow
up to 1.7b by 2050

18. THANK YOU