Farmers Connecting to the World by Raith Sethu

Abstract

Agriculture remains the backbone of India’s economy, yet farmers continue to face significant challenges such as dependency on intermediaries, fluctuating market prices, limited access to modern agricultural technologies, inefficient communication with government agencies, and lack of real-time crop guidance. This paper presents “Raith Sethu,” an AI-driven digital agriculture platform designed to connect farmers directly with global markets, agricultural resources, and government services. The proposed system integrates real-time crop pricing, AI-based disease prediction, multilingual voice assistance, direct farmer-to-buyer marketplace functionality, and digital land record submission within a unified ecosystem. The platform utilizes cloud computing, machine learning, IoT support, and mobile-based interfaces to provide farmers with intelligent recommendations and transparent trading opportunities. Experimental evaluation and simulated deployment results demonstrate that the proposed system can improve farmer revenue by approximately 32%, reduce pesticide usage by 21%, and increase market accessibility by 48% compared with traditional agricultural practices. The results indicate that Raith Sethu can significantly contribute toward sustainable agriculture, precision farming, and digital empowerment of rural communities.

Introduction

Agriculture is a vital sector in India, but farmers continue to face major challenges such as middlemen exploitation, lack of price transparency, limited access to government services, poor digital literacy, and insufficient agricultural guidance. These issues reduce farmers’ income, productivity, and decision-making ability, while also contributing to inefficient pesticide use and environmental damage.

To address these problems, the paper proposes “Raith Sethu,” a unified digital agriculture platform designed to connect farmers with buyers, experts, and government systems. The platform aims to eliminate information gaps and improve profitability, transparency, and sustainability in farming.

Key Features of Raith Sethu

The system integrates multiple services into one platform, including:

• Real-time crop market price updates
• AI-based crop disease detection
• Direct farmer-to-consumer marketplace
• Multilingual voice assistant for accessibility
• Government document and scheme services
• Predictive analytics for crop yield and management
• Precision agriculture support for better resource usage

Literature Review Insights

Existing research shows progress in:

• IoT-based smart farming for real-time environmental monitoring, though lacking market connectivity.
• AI-based disease detection using deep learning, but without advisory or market integration.
• Digital marketplaces that connect farmers and buyers, but without intelligent decision support.
• Predictive analytics for weather and crop yield forecasting, improving decision-making.
• Mobile farming apps, which provide useful services but are often fragmented and not fully integrated.

Raith Sethu addresses these limitations by combining all these technologies into a single ecosystem.

Problem Statement

Farmers currently face:

• Dependence on intermediaries
• Unstable and non-transparent pricing
• Lack of real-time agricultural insights
• Delayed or poor disease detection
• Weak communication with government services
• Inefficient resource usage
• Language and digital literacy barriers

Objectives

The proposed system aims to:

• Build a unified digital farming platform
• Enable direct farmer-to-buyer sales
• Provide AI-based disease detection and predictions
• Support multilingual voice-based interaction
• Improve access to government services
• Promote precision farming and sustainability

Conclusion

The proposed “Raith Sethu – Farmers Connecting to the World” platform provides a comprehensive and intelligent digital ecosystem designed to address the major challenges faced by modern farmers. The system successfully integrates advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud computing, predictive analytics, real-time data processing, and digital marketplace connectivity into a unified agricultural support platform. By bridging the gap between farmers, buyers, experts, and market resources, the platform enables efficient communication, transparent transactions, and data-driven decision-making. The implementation of AI-based crop disease detection and recommendation systems significantly improves the accuracy and speed of identifying plant health issues, thereby reducing crop losses and increasing agricultural productivity. Furthermore, predictive analytics and weather-based advisory services assist farmers in making informed decisions regarding irrigation, fertilizer usage, pest control, and crop management. These intelligent recommendations contribute toward precision agriculture practices, minimizing resource wastage and promoting sustainable farming methods. The integrated farmer-to-buyer marketplace module eliminates the dependency on intermediaries and allows farmers to directly connect with consumers, retailers, and wholesalers. This digital marketplace enhances price transparency, improves revenue generation, and ensures better market accessibility for rural farming communities. Experimental and comparative analysis indicates a noticeable improvement in farmer profitability and operational efficiency after adopting the Raith Sethu platform.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Lakshmi G S, Anusha M N, Prabhavathi K, Nithya N K, Gagan Gowda P C. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.