Telangana to Launch “Saagu Baagu” to Promote Innovation in Agriculture & Horticulture

Telangana government is going to launch a new project called “Saagu Baagu” for agriculture advancement. The main purpose of this project is to utilize artificial intelligence to boost the agriculture sector of the state.

According to the plan under this project, the state government is planning to touch at least 10000 farmers over 4 crop cycles and also to establish enough readiness to increase it across the state.

30, September, 2021 is the last date for submission of proposals and a virtual pre-bid conference for interested stakeholders will be conducted by the State government on September 7.

Agricultural Minister S Niranjan Reddy stated on Saturday that, “A new revolution in agriculture has already started with the adoption of emerging technologies in the sector. With this project, Telangana will be in the forefront and lead the revolution in our nation to improve farmers’ lives”.

The Saagu-Baagu project is the first public- private initiative for agriculture technology in India to achieve innovative ease of use in the fields of agriculture and horticulture. The primary purpose of this project is to bring value addition with mainstream of innovative new age technologies in agriculture.

This can potentially improve lives of more than 65% of India's population, which depends on agriculture for its livelihood. The goal is to improve farmers' incomes, save the environment and increase trust and transparency.

IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao said, “Telangana is leading by example – mainstreaming responsible and scalable deployment of emerging technology in agriculture, the highest priority sector for the country”.

Telangana government and WEF have shortlisted a list of 30 priority solution using technologies such as IoT, remote sensing, AI and blockchain to find solutions of unique problems

The release from KTR’s office said, “While the overall Saagu Baagu project is planned to be a 5-year focused effort, the PIPs onboarded under the EoI shall be confined to 2 years (3~4 crop cycles) across multiple districts of select priority crops such as Cotton, Chill and Turmeric for Kharif season and Ground Nut, Bengal Gram, and Paddy for Rabi season”.