Amul, the world’s largest dairy co-op, had launched an AI assistant called Sarlbien to offer support to its farmer-owners.
The co-op, operated by the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, represents more than 3.6 million milk producers and 18,600 villages, allowing it to gather decades worth of agricultural data which has formed the basis of software such as the Automatic Milk Collection System (AMCS) and the Pashudhan app.
These can be deployed by members of the co-operative throughout the course of their work – and now Amul is now taking things one step further the digital assistant.
AI News reports that Sarlaben is chat-based interface which offers personalised, “cattle-specific” support across scores of local dialects.
It is based on a Amul’s huge store of data covering more than two billion annual milk procurement transactions, veterinary treatment records for more than 30 million cattle, seven million artificial inseminations, satellite imagery for fodder production mapping, and a pentennial cattle census.
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On top of that, each animal in Amul’s system has a unique ID with records of feed intake, disease history, and milking status.
The co-op says this combines into an AI solution that can be accessed via its Amul Farmer app or through voice calls.
“Amul AI is about taking dependable, verified information directly to the farmer – instantly and in a language they are comfortable with,” said Jayen Mehta, MD of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation.
The platform will help farmers make “timely decisions that improve animal productivity and income” through the integration of this structured data, he added.
Sarlaban will initially be available in Gujarati, but is built on the Indian government’s multilingual framework and has support for multiple dialects.
Eventually, the app could be expanded to 20 Indian languages, which Amul says would enable it to be used by more than 20,000 villages across 20 states.
Saswata Narayan Biswas, director of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA). frames it as an AI embedded in a co-operative framework, acting as “an instrument of inclusive rural transformation”.
