How do you see Indian agriculture today? With so much changing—climate, markets, policies—what’s shifting most clearly for farmers?
Indian agriculture today is grappling with the combined pressures of climate change, market volatility and evolving policy frameworks. Erratic weather patterns, rising input costs and global trade uncertainties are disrupting crop cycles, reducing yields and impacting farmer incomes. While tech-enabled government schemes and digital infrastructure are beginning to offer solutions, their reach remains limited due to infrastructural and digital divides in rural India.
In this evolving landscape, the sector is witnessing a gradual shift from traditional farming finance to integrated, platform-based agri-ecosystem models. Digital infrastructure—including self-service journeys, embedded finance and predictive risk underwriting—when integrated with AgTech, NGOs and government schemes through APIs, can enhance reach and efficiency. This shift reduces operational costs, drives automation and enables scale with minimal customer acquisition cost.
Moreover, a focus on ESG metrics, gender-sensitive lending and digital traceability can embed trust and accountability across the value chain. Leveraging transaction and behavioural data fuels smarter underwriting and unlocks “Data-as-a-Service” revenue streams. Such platform-led approaches are helping Indian agriculture become more resilient, inclusive and ready for the future—bridging systemic gaps while empowering farmers and agri-enterprises at scale.
When it comes to sustainable or climate-resilient practices, what are the real challenges farmers face in adopting them?
While climate-resilient practices, like crop diversification and efficient water use, are critical for long-term sustainability, Indian smallholder farmers face multiple barriers to their adoption, which include limited access to finance, inadequate awareness and fragmented extension support, among others. Adding to these challenges is the concept of the ‘green premium’, which is the higher upfront cost often associated with sustainable inputs, technologies or certifications.
While these solutions offer long-term environmental and productivity benefits, they typically do not yield immediate financial returns to farmers. In fact, without assured market demand or premium pricing, smallholders risk incurring higher costs without commensurate gains. This creates a significant disincentive, especially for risk-averse farmers operating on thin margins. Unless buyers, policymakers and financial institutions step in to absorb or offset this green premium through incentives, support schemes or market access guarantees, the transition to sustainable agriculture will remain slow and uneven despite its necessity in the face of climate change.
Is sustainability truly practical for small and marginal farmers? Or, does it demand trade-offs that are hard for them to make?
To make sustainability both feasible and financially viable for India’s smallholders, promising approaches, including carbon projects, climate-smart advisory, ESG ratings and climate-smart financing, can be followed. Pilots in rice methane reduction and agroforestry, supported by technical assistance and exposure visits, are helping farmers access future carbon markets and earn additional income. Climate-smart advisory enables agri-entrepreneurs and farmer producer organisations (FPOs) to adopt solutions with confidence, generating demand and revenue for climate services. ESG assessments, including greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories and positive impact ratings, ensure sustainability outcomes are measurable and transparent.
Climate smart agriculture advisory can enable agri-entrepreneurs and FPOs adopt climate-smart solutions with confidence, generating demand and revenue for climate services. ESG assessments—including GHG inventory and positive impact ratings—ensure sustainability outcomes are measurable and transparent.
An integrated model—blending capital, capacity building and carbon impact—can make sustainable agriculture not just an environmental imperative but also a viable economic opportunity for India’s most vulnerable farmers.
FPOs are often seen as a solution for farmers to come together. From what you’ve seen, where have they actually worked and where have they struggled?
FPOs are designed to harness the power of collectivisation to reduce input costs and improve price realisation. However, several practical challenges hinder their effectiveness. For example, many FPOs lack skilled personnel to handle operations, financial planning and market negotiations, limiting their ability to function as efficient business entities. They have inadequate access to working capital, which restricts them from bulk purchasing inputs or aggregating produce at scale, weakening their bargaining power on both cost and price fronts.
Moreover, farmers tend to see FPOs as external entities rather than member-driven institutions. Low participation in decision-making and operations reduces trust and ownership, weakening the collective approach. When the time to sell produce comes, many FPOs struggle to establish direct linkages with institutional buyers or organised markets, making it difficult to secure better prices for the members. Poor logistics, inadequate storage and lack of grading/sorting facilities prevent FPOs from maintaining quality standards and fulfilling bulk orders consistently.
To address these gaps, some of the most effective interventions combine capital access, governance support and institutional buyer connections. Digital platforms delivering real-time market intelligence and decision-making tools, paired with finance, technology and on-ground advisory, are helping to professionalise FPOs and make them more market-ready.
What structural or policy shifts are needed to make FPOs financially sustainable beyond external funding?
To make FPOs financially sustainable beyond external funding, four major policy shifts are required. First, policies should enable easier access to low-interest working capital through collateral-free loans, credit guarantees and tailored financial products. Linking FPOs directly with formal financial institutions can reduce dependence on grants and subsidies.
Second, government and institutional procurement policies should prioritise FPOs, offering assured markets with fair pricing. Enabling direct linkages with e-NAM, agri-tech platforms and retail buyers can improve price realisation and business viability.
Third, policies must fund long-term investments in leadership development, business planning, digital tools and managerial training. Encouraging partnerships with incubators and business development service providers can build entrepreneurial capacity within FPOs. And, lastly, shift from input/output aggregation to value-added activities by supporting processing, branding and packaging through tax breaks, infrastructure subsidies and ease-of-doing-business reforms should be encouraged. This will help FPOs move up the value chain, improving margins and resilience.
Together, these shifts can transition FPOs from grant-dependent entities to competitive, market-driven institutions that truly empower smallholders.
Even with FPOs, many farmers still face price volatility. How do we begin to break that cycle and offer real income security?
While FPOs help mitigate price volatility, many farmers still face income instability due to inconsistent market access, limited scale and weak infrastructure of these entities. To break this cycle, a multi-layered approach is essential. We should strengthen and scale FPOs by enabling their access to affordable credit, professional management and reliable storage facilities. This will allow them to aggregate produce effectively, time their sales strategically and negotiate better prices. Then, there is a need to promote forward market linkages through institutional buyers, e-commerce platforms and public procurement. Long-term buy-back arrangements and contract farming models can ensure predictable pricing and stable incomes.
FPOs can introduce price risk management tools, such as crop insurance, minimum support price-linked procurement for more crops and commodity futures awareness, to help farmers. These mechanisms offer a safety net against market dips. At the same time, FPOs must help farmers diversify income sources through allied activities, like dairy, poultry or horticulture farming and promote value addition within FPOs to improve profit margins.
FPOs should also invest in real-time market intelligence and advisory services to guide farmers on when, what and where to sell, minimising distress sales. Connecting FPOs to institutional buyers, enabling better price discovery and providing strategic aggregation and storage capabilities can shift farmers from reactive selling to proactive income planning, building long-term stability.
Agritech and digital tools are gaining attention, but how well are they reaching smallholders in Tier II and Tier 3 regions?
Agritech and digital tools are transforming smallholder farming in India by promoting sustainability and climate resilience. Tools like precision farming platforms weather advisory apps soil health monitors, digital marketplaces and climate-smart advisory platforms empower farmers with data-driven insights, timely interventions and better market access. These innovations help optimise resource use, reduce input costs and improve yield and income stability, which are critical for smallholders facing climate uncertainties.
However, widespread adoption of agritech faces notable challenges. Digital illiteracy, poor internet access in remote areas and limited awareness about it hinder its usage. Many smallholders are hesitant to trust new technologies, especially when tools are not localised or affordable. Additionally, tools often need customisation to fit diverse agro-climatic zones and cropping systems, complicating scalability.
To overcome these barriers, targeted training, local language content and partnerships with FPOs and government extension systems are crucial. Blending high-tech solutions with grassroots support will ensure that digital innovations reach and benefit even the most marginalised farmers, making Indian agriculture more resilient, inclusive and future-ready.
And when they do reach the grassroots, who benefits? How do we ensure that technology reduces gaps instead of widening them?
When agritech solutions reach the ground, the primary beneficiaries tend to be farmers with better infrastructure, digital literacy and market access—typically medium to large growers in well-connected areas. This creates the risk that technology, instead of bridging gaps, could deepen them by leaving small and marginal farmers behind. To truly democratise impact, technology must be designed and delivered with inclusion at its core.
Digital transformation strategy directly addresses this challenge. Models that combine digital platforms with physical access points through FPOs, voice-based AI, phygital outreach and localised interfaces help extend benefits to digitally underserved farmers. Human-centred advisory, operated through community-based organisations, NGOs and self-help groups, ensures trust and adoption of agritech. Over time, data-driven feedback loops make these systems smarter and more relevant, especially for those starting from a disadvantaged position.
In the rush to scale and innovate, what do you think we risk losing that’s still valuable — in practices, knowledge or relationships?
In scaling up, there is a risk of losing traditional agricultural wisdom, localised practices and the social trust embedded in rural systems. The goal should be to integrate these into modern solutions rather than replace them. For example, climate-smart agriculture initiatives, plant protein processing, bio-energy and solar-powered supply chains align with both income generation and environmental stewardship, turning traditional eco-friendly practices into viable business opportunities.
Digital marketplaces, when embedded in FPO structures, can expand reach without displacing community-driven systems. Innovation works best when it builds on legacy systems, combining generational wisdom with new-age tools, data and market access to create regenerative, resilient growth.
If you were mentoring someone new to this space, say an agri-entrepreneur or a policymaker, what’s one hard truth and one lasting hope you’d want to share?
Agriculture as a field in India for an aspiring entrepreneur or a policymaker is both encouraging and challenging. It is encouraging because over 50% of our land is cultivable, offering immense potential not just to ensure food security at the national level, but to contribute meaningfully at a global scale.
However, the hard truth of this situation is that transforming Indian agriculture is not just about protecting farmers’ livelihood. It is also about securing global food security. But the path to achieve this dual target is complex. Agriculture remains a high-risk sector, vulnerable to erratic weather, volatile markets and shifting policies. The key is to stay aggressive in building solutions while equally focused on mitigating risks. Passion alone is not enough. It must be paired with empathy for farmers and an understanding of their evolving needs. My lasting hope is that this transformation is possible. The journey is challenging, but the payoff—an agricultural economy that is resilient domestically and competitive globally—is worth the effort.
