The ketchup you get by growing tomatoes for others

Synthetic data, RAG, crunching fruits from the shells of data patterns, cracking the Moravec's paradox, executing Computer Vision on the ground and a lot more—even when you invest tech seeds in someone's else's land, the fruits can fall in your backyard. Who better than a wealth-management firm to show that!

- By Pratima H

What happens when Al is harvested in the right way and in the right soil by farmers? What happens when your software talent resources are shared for community work? Wells Fargo has been trying that for improving the lives of farmers in Telangana and Karnataka as well as for some upskilling work with other NGOs. Its technology team dedicated 2,200 volunteering hours to redesign the FarmPrecise app, developed by Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR). The idea was to equip farmers with actionable insights for better decision-making, covering weather forecasts, crop management advice, fertilizer application and spraying techniques and real-time market prices and government scheme updates. This redesign was noteworthy for the integration of AI-powered computer vision used for precise crop disease detection and recommendations for organic solutions. Turns out that AI seeds actually blossom in these pastures. Recent metrics show upticks in feature usage by 25%, and savings of 20% of input costs for over 70,000 farmers (with more than 100,000 downloads). Here's an interview with Harish Mohan, Head - Digital Technologies and Innovation - Wells Fargo India and the Philippines to understand this interesting wealth creation strategy—growing knowledge by generously sowing some seeds in volunteer work. He also tells why precision farming and wealth-creation and fraud detection patterns are branches of the same tree? And what rocks still come in the way of new digital furrows?

How many developers and resource hours are committed to such community work? Any other examples like WOTR that you can share?