Cultivating a Digital Harvest: Training Pakistani Farmers for an AI‑Powered Agricultural Future

Artificial intelligence holds transformative potential for Pakistan's agriculture sector, which contributes nearly 23 percent to national GDP and supports millions of livelihoods. Yet the gap between this potential and on-ground reality remains vast. For smallholder farmers — the backbone of Pakistani agriculture — the path to AI adoption is obstructed by low digital literacy, limited internet connectivity, and tools that often seem designed for industrial farms rather than the small plots that characterise the country's rural landscape.

Promising models are nonetheless emerging across Pakistan that demonstrate how farmers can be trained to generate AI-compatible data and use simple digital tools. Taken together, they trace a practical pathway — from first contact with a smartphone to routine use of AI-powered advisory services — that policymakers and development partners can build on.

Building digital literacy from the ground up

Before farmers can engage with AI tools, they need fundamental digital skills: using a smartphone, navigating applications, and interpreting basic digital information. These skills cannot be assumed in communities where a mobile phone may be the first digital device a person has ever handled.

The Connected Futures project — implemented by UN Women Pakistan in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts of Bajaur, Mohmand, and Khyber — offers a compelling example of reaching farmers with low literacy. The initiative trained 750 women farmers using a tailored, inclusive approach that confronted barriers to participation head-on. Participants received hands-on practice with Android phones, easy-to-use information packages with QR codes linking to instructional YouTube videos, and a specially designed visual manual for ongoing reference. Even farmers with little or no formal schooling could fully engage with the training and apply digital skills in their daily agricultural practice.

The design lesson is transferable: effective programmes never assume prior knowledge. They start with the basics, match the literacy and technical comfort of participants, and build confidence gradually.

Practical data collection farmers can own

AI is only as good as the data beneath it. For models to serve Pakistani smallholders, they need high-quality, structured, locally collected data — and farmers themselves are best placed to collect it, provided the tools and methods are intuitive.

The Digital Dera initiative, a public-private partnership in Punjab's Pakpattan and Okara districts, shows how farmers can be introduced to data collection and analysis through a hub-based model. Training covers weather forecasts, soil analysis, climate-resilient seeds and fertilisers, smart irrigation techniques, crop insurance, and marketing opportunities. Research on the programme found that participating farmers achieved an average productivity increase of 55.21 kg per acre and a net farm return increase of PKR 14,365 per acre — evidence that digital training pays for itself at the farm gate.

The Smart Village Pakistan initiative — launched in Gokina, Sambrial, and Swabi — extends this model with comprehensive digital skills training spanning basic digital literacy, online marketing, e-commerce, digital financial inclusion, and digital agriculture. The Swabi Smart Village, inaugurated in April 2025 with support from the Ministry of IT, Huawei Technologies, and the ITU, is intended as a national model for the digital transformation of rural communities, with a particular focus on women and farmers — and a demonstration of what government, private sector, and technology providers can achieve in partnership.

AI tools that meet farmers where they are

Perhaps the most encouraging development for Pakistani farmers is the emergence of AI tools designed specifically for users with limited digital experience. Voice-based interfaces, in particular, bypass literacy barriers entirely and make AI advisory services genuinely accessible.

Telenor Pakistan, through its digital agriculture platform Khushaal Watan, has launched Kissan Dost Bashir — Pakistan's first AI-powered conversational agriculture voice bot. Available around the clock via a simple phone call (dialling 7272) and through the 7272.pk portal, the service provides real-time mandi rates, contextual weather-based crop advisory, and livestock guidance in Urdu.

A multi-pronged approach built on what already works

Drawing on these examples, a comprehensive national approach to preparing farmers for an AI-powered future rests on six mutually reinforcing pillars — each already anchored by a working Pakistani precedent rather than an imported blueprint.

The research pillar deserves particular emphasis. Work at Shah Abdul Latif University — including a date-fruit handling system and a deep-learning model for sugarcane disease detection — demonstrates that AI built on locally collected data can reach production-grade performance on Pakistani crops. Commercialising such systems is the bridge from laboratory accuracy to farm-gate impact.

What still stands in the way — and what answers it

Even with these promising approaches, three structural barriers persist. None is insurmountable, but each requires deliberate policy attention rather than an assumption that markets or pilots will resolve it on their own.

Farmers as participants, not spectators

Training farmers for an AI-compatible future is not about teaching them to code or to understand machine-learning algorithms. It is about building foundational digital literacy, introducing simple data-collection tools, and delivering AI-powered advice through interfaces — above all, voice — that farmers can actually use. The examples emerging from Pakistan, from Digital Dera to the Smart Villages to Kissan Dost Bashir, demonstrate that with the right approach, smallholders can become active participants in the digital agricultural revolution rather than bystanders to it.

The path forward requires sustained investment in rural digital infrastructure, ongoing commitment to inclusive training programmes, and a focus on AI tools designed around the realities of smallholder farming. By scaling the models that already work and squarely addressing connectivity, affordability, and data governance, Pakistan can transform its largest employment sector — and ensure the benefits of AI are shared across the country.