Farming is Building a Stronger Rural Economy in Uttar Pradesh, India

In the village of Devpokhar, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, harvest season feels different this year. Farmers are talking not only about better harvest, but also all the innovations brought by the World Bank Group’s AgriConnect initiative and the UP-AGREES project.

 A range of interventions are creating an impact including a project pilot where farmers are using a new planting method called direct seeded rice – which involves planting rice directly into a paddy field, instead of the traditional method of growing seedlings in nurseries. The new approach can increase yields, lower costs, reduce water use, and cut emissions. Most importantly, it can also create jobs across the entire value chain of rice farming, creating a variety of high-quality jobs from precision machinery operators to warehouse managers and product distributors.

That matters in Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s most important farming states and home to 240 million people. Many rural families still struggle with low productivity, and limited access to modern tools and markets. For farmers, the results are already visible.

Surja Devi says her paddy yield has risen to 9 tonnes per hectare, more than double her usual harvest. “Next season, I’m converting my whole farm to mechanized direct seeded rice,” she says.

Another farmer, Sukhari Prasad, said the new method has lowered his costs while improving efficiency. “Cultivation is up to INR 10,000 cheaper, more than $120 per hectare. Direct seeded rice also saves water.”

Connecting farmers to services, markets, and jobs

At the center of the effort is AgriConnect – a World Bank Group initiative that aims to help 300 million smallholder farmers globally move from subsistence to surplus by connecting them to services, infrastructure, and markets.

In India, the project is helping farmer groups, including women-led groups, attract investors and access more profitable markets. It also brings in advisory support, including timely guidance on crops, weather and straw management, helping to curb stubble burning.

UP-AGRIVERSE, the project’s digital backbone, combines market information, advice, and financial services. By leveraging partnerships with global and national leading organizations such as Google, Networks for Humanity, among others, it uses “small AI”, models that can work on basic smartphones and low-bandwidth networks.

“With UP-AGRIVERSE, we are building a state-wide digital agriculture ecosystem where data, services, and AI analytics come together to support every farmer, from smallholders to fish farmers, across Uttar Pradesh, and to make the sector truly future ready,” said Pratyush Pandey, Special Secretary, Department of Coordination, and Additional Project Coordinator, UPDASP.

What scaling up could mean

Early results confirm that direct seeded rice can help raise productivity using fewer resources. The plan is to expand this method to 200,000 hectares in the near term, with a long-term ambition of reaching 2 million hectares.

If the approach works at a larger scale, it could help more farmers improve output, increase profits, hire more people and strengthen the wider rural economy. The climate benefits are also considerable, with a reduction of around 230,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

The opportunity goes beyond bigger harvests and lower emissions. As the model grows, it’s expected that the demand for storage, logistics, packaging, quality checks, and digital market services will also rise. This could create jobs across rural communities, from machinery operators and warehouse managers to cold-chain workers and digital service providers.

Bringing in private investment

In the rice and wheat sectors, private investors and companies can help expand access to improved seeds, farm machinery, and services that help farmers connect to larger markets. The project is also catalyzing the state’s largest foreign investment in aquaculture at $461 million through Aqua Bridge - a Dubai-based firm that works to modernize fish and shrimp farming. Aqua Bridge will equip aquafarmers with AI-driven drone technologies.

Kailash Narayan Singh, a fish farmer, summarized the shift: “Today we sell fish in local markets with low profit margins. Soon we will sell to high-value global markets.”

At the heart of this effort are partnerships, bringing together public and private actors to support farmers with practical tools and real-time information on weather, crops, and markets.

One such partnership, announced earlier this year, brings together the World Bank Group, the government of Maharashtra, and the EkStep Foundation, an Indian nonprofit technology foundation focused on building digital public infrastructure and open-source platforms, to support an AI-powered, multilingual, open-source tool that provides farmers with real-time advisories. Such partnerships will continue to be at the heart of AgriConnect in India.

What's happening in Uttar Pradesh is about more than a better way to farm. It is an example of how technology, private capital, and public policy can combine to create new economic life in rural areas. The impact will be felt not only in fields, but across the businesses, services, and jobs that surround them.