Digital Crop Survey - Powering Voice Agents to verify crop data
Background
The Digital Crop Survey (DCS) is a bi-annual national exercise undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare to capture crop and acreage information at the plot level. To strengthen this data foundation, the Ministry partnered with Sarvam to pilot AI-powered voice agents. The objective was to validate crop data directly with farmers at scale, ensuring data integrity without adding operational burden to the existing field machinery.
Solution
Conducted between October 1-24, 2025, the pilot covered 4 lakh+ farmers across Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, and Kerala. The solution deployed multilingual AI voice agents over telephony, complemented by WhatsApp-based follow-ups. This hybrid workflow used voice calls as the primary method to reach farmers, while digital channels allowed for high-precision confirmation of details.
Impact
Moving beyond traditional small-sample checks, the pilot established a model for large-scale verification driven by three core capabilities.
Direct farmer confirmation: The solution created a direct channel with farmers, allowing them to confirm or correct their crop details personally. This proved that technology can be used to cross-check administrative data with ground reality effectively.
Targeted field action: The voice agent successfully identified specific villages or sub-districts where data mismatches were concentrated. This enables the Ministry to deploy inspection teams only where they are actually needed, rather than conducting broad, resource-intensive re-surveys.
High-volume engagement: The pilot demonstrated that AI voice agents can achieve high connectivity rates. The ability to engage farmers in their local language via their preferred medium ensured the process was accessible and scalable.
4L+
Farmers reached
4
States covered
8Cr
Farmers targeted for Rabi 2026
1Cr+
Interactions per day capacity
Path to national scale
Based on the success of the pilot, the Ministry is moving toward a significant expansion of this verification layer for the Rabi season 2026 (February-March). The target is to expand coverage to up to 8 crore farmers. The underlying infrastructure is production-ready to handle 1 crore+ interactions per day.
Conclusion
The Digital Crop Survey pilot represents a shift from manual, periodic checks to continuous, technology-enabled verification. By establishing a scalable model for data governance, this infrastructure can now be extended to support future national needs such as scheme awareness, advisory services, and benefit verification.
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