Next-Generation Digital Networking Through Meta-Verse: A

Cynosure for Indian Agriculture

Weijimlu Tayang

, M. Nirmala Devi

1,* b

, C. Katthikeyan

and Paul Mansingh

Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Sociology, TNAU, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

VIT School for Agricultural Innovations and Advanced Learning, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India

Keywords: Meta-Verse, Extended Reality, Digital Divide, Digital Revolution, Agri. 5.0, Indian Agricultural and Allied

Sector

Abstract: With the popularization of internet usage in agricultural and allied sectors various breakthrough innovations

landed in production technology, marketing and beyond aiming to benefit all the stakeholders in agriculture

and allied sector. Digital revolution in agriculture sector brought disruptive technologies to enhance

production operation and agricultural development. However, studies have shown that digital divide is a key

matter existing among agricultural stakeholders in Indian context. Hence, the research study intends to present

resilience of meta-verse to come through digital divide in the Agri. 5.0 era. Therefore, the study examined

various factors from available secondary literature from Scopus international database that has impede the

use of technologies to its full potential. In terms of application of technologies from Agri. 5.0, gap in social

dimension, emotional dimension and economical dimension was studied thoroughly to enable meta-verse

rigorously in agriculture and allied sectors. In this regard the study revealed that meta-verse characterized

with high interactive service element and decentralization element which have the potential to bridge the

digital gap among the agricultural stakeholders through next generation social networking. Finally, the study

opened future research directions for advance functioning and development of meta-verse based agricultural

and allied sectors.

1 INTRODUCTION

Indian agriculture has changed gradually and

methodically throughout time with the introduction of

digital application. When it comes to the quantity of

digital users, the Indian telecom market ranks second

globally. India's phone subscriber count rose from

1,197.87 million at the end of December 2018 to

1,203.77 million at the end of January 2019. The

country also has 560 million internet users in 2018,

making it the second largest country behind China

(Yankam et al. 2019). The government of India also

initiated "Digital India" campaign, which was

unveiled on July 1st, 2015, with the aim to provide

online access to a range of services, including those

linked to livelihood. Digital infrastructure, digital

https://orcid.org/0009-0001-2603-014X

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6542-3579

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0631-3820

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3423-8618

Corresponding author

services, and digital literacy were the three main parts

of the initiative aiming to benefit rural and farm

population (Goswami,2016).

Despite the benefit aimed by the government

programs and increase usage of internet among the

citizens, various scientific studies conducted by

agricultural researchers reveals that there exists

uneven utilization of digitalization in agriculture and

allied sector creating digital divide. As per the

previous studies digital divide includes critical factor

such as unequal access to internet, lack of digital

literacy among the farmers, lack of digital skills and

this may further be due to geographical barrier and

economic barrier faced among the farmers and other

stakeholders in agriculture and allied sector (Khanal

et al. 2021).

Tayang, W., Devi, M. N., Katthikeyan, C. and Mansingh, P.

Next-Generation Digital Networking Through Meta-Verse: A Cynosure for Indian Agriculture.

DOI: 10.5220/0012883000004519

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Emerging Innovations for Sustainable Agriculture (ICEISA 2024), pages 121-127

ISBN: 978-989-758-714-6

121

In contrast to the real-world digital divide issues,

where possibilities and resources may be restricted

based on a person's physical ability, socioeconomic

standing, or place of residence, anyone with an

internet connection can access the metaverse. All

people can have equal access to information,

services, and experiences through the ‘Metaverse’.

This implies that every stakeholder would have equal

access to knowledge, resources, and experiences in

the metaverse regardless of one’s location, income

level, or physical limitations (Agarwal and Alathur,

2023).

Therefore, this paper aims to investigate critical

factors concerning digital divide in digitalization of

agricultural and allied sector in India and investigate

significant potential impact of metaverse in

overcoming the same. As limited numbers of research

works were found emphasizing metaverse in

agricultural and allied sector, indicating metaverse

research is still in nascent stage, this paper also tried

to analyze to what extent metaverse can enrich the

digital revolution and how could researchers and

policy makers support equitable development of

digitalization in Indian agricultural and allied sector.

2 BACKGROUND

2.1 Digital Revolution and Digital

Divide in Agricultural and Allied

Sector

Since the beginning of time, agriculture in India has

advanced from 1.0 to 5.0 to provide food for human

existence. The conventional agricultural age, which is

mostly dependent on human and animal forces, is

ushered in by Agriculture 1.0. Farmers tried to

employ self-contained machinery after then, during

the Agri. 2.0 era. Agri. 2.0 increased productivity and

efficiency, which led to a minor increase in the use of

chemicals. Then the twentieth century saw the advent

of Agriculture 3.0 as a result of the enormous

technological improvements brought about by the

development of computers. The computer assisted in

performing precise and accurate tasks (Gagliardi et al.

2022). The cultivation of farmers' land has benefited

from with the use of robotics, internet of things, and

artificial intelligence in Agri.4.0 by making farming

simpler and more advantageous (Naikwade et al.

2022). Modern technologies like the Internet of

Things, Drone application (Daponte et al. 2019),

Artificial Intelligence (Chukkapalli et al. 2020),

Cloud Computing, and Remote Sensing have made

significant advancements possible in the subject of

Smart Sustainable Agriculture during this era (Wang

et al. 2021).

Today Agri. 5.0 builds upon previous digital

revolutions and emphasizes on building human

centric to drive the superior services and products by

seamlessly integrating technologies such as artificial

intelligence, robotics, virtual reality and augmented

reality. Incorporation of advance technologies such

as use of Internet, Artificial Intelligence, Sensors and

Robotics in agricultural production technologies,

marketing and management has been extensively

promoted as means to improve farm production,

productivity and farmers income (Rotz et al., 2019)

while minimizing the use of resource wastage in any

form. The use of digital tools became necessary for

farmers, research scholars and other stakeholders of

agriculture and allied sector in decision making and

this have significantly improved the lives of farmers

and others stakeholders of agricultural sector who can

afford the use of digital technologies.

However, in contrast, various literature also

publicized the struggle to harness the full potential of

digital technologies which still sits uneasily among

the farmers and agricultural policy makers, increasing

the weights towards digital divide. The American

Library Association (ALA) defined digital divide, as

the difference in access to information via the Internet

and other information technologies and services,

including the Internet and mobile divide between

rural and urban areas, as well as differences in access

due to geography, economic status, gender, and

physical ability. The three main areas of the digital

divide idea are infrastructure, capacity building, and

resource usage (Yankam et al. 2019).

2.1.1 Factors Crafting Digital Divide Among

the Stakeholders of Agricultural and

Allied Sector

Disparate access to digital devices is not the main

cause of the digital divide; rather, it is the distinct uses

of those technologies (Yankam et al. 2019). Thus,

with the exploration of digital divide in agricultural

and allied sector it is clear that factors crafting digital

divide among farmers was observed to be the

outcome of ‘Social Dimension’ (such as poor

educational quality, low literacy rate of an individual

farmers and geographical barrier), ‘Emotional

Dimension’ (such as introvert behavior of an

individual farmer and weak or lack of digital literacy),

and ‘Economical Dimension’ (such as poor financial

and technical assistance) in adapting themselves to

digital revolution (Gasperini and Mclean, 2001).

ICEISA 2024 - International Conference on ‘Emerging Innovations for Sustainable Agriculture: Leveraging the potential of Digital

Innovations by the Farmers, Agri-tech Startups and Agribusiness Enterprises in Agricu

122

2.1.2 Meta-Verse for Agricultural and Allied

Sector

The word ‘Meta-verse’ was first introduced in the

book called ‘Snow Crash’ in 1992 written by Neil

Stephenson (N. Stephenson, 1992) and outlined

Meta-verse as an imaginary space free from physical

reality. In the book ‘The Metaverse, And How It Will

Revolutionize Everything’ written by Mathew Bells

further described metaverse as the space that mimics

the interaction of real world by integrating

technologies (Rameshwar and Graham, 2023)

through virtual interaction, spatio-temporal

extensibility and human-computer symbiosis (Sun et

al. 2022). Today Meta-verse can be understood as a

space knitted by the user and for the users to manifest

their extended reality, through integration of virtual

tools that connects humans forming a common

framework (Rameshwar, 2022). Users' virtual

experiences are shaped by human imagination

combined with ever-evolving technical

advancements. As with the physical self, each user in

the metaverse has an avatar that they utilize to

experience a different life in a virtuality that is a

metaphor of their real surroundings (Lee et al. 2021).

This allows users using virtual reality or augmented

reality systems to interact with the metaverse and

exist on a spectrum between the actual world and

virtual reality (Fu et al. 2022).

3 MATERIALS AND METHODS

To understand the landscape of application of

metaverse related to Indian agriculture and allied

sector a systematic literature review was conducted

from international database ‘Google Scholar’. This

approach helped in facilitating a comprehensive

review on number of agricultural researchers working

towards enabling metaverse in Indian agriculture

scenario. Based on the primary objective set for the

research and purpose if study, a set of keywords i.e.

“Metaverse”, “Agri-metaverse”, and “Metaverse”

AND “Agriculture” AND “India” were identified.

The platform provided extensive multidisciplinary

literature available on metaverse (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Bibliometric review search for the topic

metaverse in Indian agricultural and allied sector

Further the inclusion of literature was restricted to

English language, articles available in open access,

Whereas the articles that did not provide accurate

information with the objective of research were

excluded based on the title, abstract and reading of

full-length article as shown in the Table 1.

Table 1: Article Selection for the topic metaverse in Indian

agricultural and allied sector

S.no

Criteria for Inclusion of

article

No. of articles

Selected

1 Open Access 63

2 English Language 54

Criteria for Exclusion of

article

No. of articles

Rejected

1 Excluded by Title 13

2 Excluded by Abstract 28

Excluded by Full Length

Paper

Total Number of Articles

Selected

1 2 3 4

Keyword

“Metaverse”

Limit to

riculture

Limit to Indian

Agriculture

Limit to Open

Access

43’400

5’619

2260

Next-Generation Digital Networking Through Meta-Verse: A Cynosure for Indian Agriculture

123

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The systematic literature review generated increased

research attention on metaverse in the field of

agriculture world-wide and in Indian agricultural

context (Figure 2). It can be observed that the

scientific research study has been increasing every

year indicating the potential shift of digital revolution

to metaverse in near future.

Figure 2: Growing number of scientific research on

metaverse in agricultural and allied sector

Although research on metaverse in agricultural

field in worldwide were conducted extensively,

according to the search very few literatures was

available in in Indian context that aligns with the

current research study. Table 2 represents the detail

analysis on selected articles that supports the

objective of current research study.

Table 2: Meta-verse research works on Indian agriculture

and allied sector

S.no Authors Findings

1 Dixit,

2022

The study demonstrated

how several people can

interact in the virtual

world with each other

through avatars, creating a

very immersive

experience. The effects on

digital identity, privacy,

and interpersonal

relationships are societal.

2 Kumar et

al. 2022

The study designed secure

data sharing framework

for IoT-based IA by

exploiting deep learning

and smart contract to

propose a new IoT-

enabled IA framework.

3 Srivastava

, 2022

The metaverse makes it

possible to digitally tour

farms, making it a

fantastic chance for both

consumers and farmers to

interact. The platform also

provides tools for data

visualization and deliver

the information to

decision-makers or other

important stakeholders.

4 Rathore,

2018

Future marketing could be

influenced by the

metaverse to become

more technologically

sophisticated and

sustainable.

4.1 Meta-Verse: A Cynosure for Indian

Agriculture

When it comes to agricultural and allied sector

combination of digital tools such as Sensors, GPS and

Modelling software’s with automatic digitalization

machineries (Tractors, Weeders, Drones, Irrigation

Equipment’s etc.) was observed to be benefiting

farmers in constructing efficient use of the resources

and increase farm production and income (Srivastava,

2022). Therefore, it can be assumed positively that

metaverse has extraordinarily large potential in

agriculture and allied sector, as digital inclusiveness

is arguably one of the metaverse's most exciting uses.

Work, learning, socializing, and self-entertainment

can all be revolutionized in metaverse. New avenues

for agricultural social engagement, education, and

commercial production (Dwivedi et al. 2022) may be

opened up by it.

The metaverse also holds the potential to develop

into a persistent, self-sustaining virtual environment

that interacts and coexists with the real world with a

great degree of independence (Grieves and Vickers,

2017). Where avatars can be controlled by a user i.e.

individual farmer in the real world via Extended

Reality and user interaction techniques for a variety

of group activities (Kumar et al. 2022). By design, the

ICEISA 2024 - International Conference on ‘Emerging Innovations for Sustainable Agriculture: Leveraging the potential of Digital

Innovations by the Farmers, Agri-tech Startups and Agribusiness Enterprises in Agricu

124

metaverse is a user-focused application (Dixit, 2022).

Such consideration can be made in metaverse, when

it comes to network design, such as by making farmer

experience the center of traffic management or by

making farmer-centric sensing and communication

possible (Kumar et al. 2022).

4.2 Meta-Verse for Social Dimension

The first step toward digital inclusion is access. Using

extended reality, the meta-verse enables individual

farmers to collaborate electronically and plan diverse

training and fully immersive learning experiences

which was not possible all cases due to a geographical

barrier (Dixit, 2022). This enables a single farmer to

visit the fields of other successful and progressive

farmers. The metaverse facilitates experiential

learning by enabling users to physically handle

objects within the virtual digital twin and explore

their curiosity (Voinea et al. 2022).

Further the interaction between the agricultural

stakeholders could be completely transformed by the

metaverse (Agarwal and Alathur, 2023). In the

metaverse, these groups can connect with others,

build supportive networks, and contribute to the

development of new ideas and initiatives for the

progress of agricultural and allied sector. The

metaverse has the potential to break down the social

barriers and geographical boundaries enabling the

development of a more equitable and inclusive

farming society (Kumar et al. 2022).

The users in the metaverse also have the access to

create virtual environment in digital twins unlike

users in virtual reality and augmented reality has to

pay full attention to the virtual environment. This

aligns with the well-established needs of virtual

environments: a method to communicate (by gesture,

writing, voice, etc.), a way to share information and

control things, and a shared feeling of presence,

place, and real-time interaction. Additionally, users

can communicate consistently and in real time with

one another (Grubert et al. 2016).

4.3 Meta-Verse for Emotional

Dimension

Participation in agricultural development program

initiatives is hampered by the fact that some

stakeholders in the agricultural and related sectors

lack the knowledge and abilities necessary to manage

digital operations in virtual environments. Despite

having professional assistance, a person's limited

comprehension of digital language prevents them

from paying attention and engaging fully in the

application. This is where metaverse comes to focus.

Accessing the metaverse doesn't require complicated

commands or comprehension. In the metaverse,

simple human gestures that have been used for

millennia are sufficient to complete any work (Xi et

al. 2022). The computer vision techniques available

today are not capable of capturing and reflecting in

real time the emotions, behaviors, and interactions of

users which can be achieved with additional input

modality in granularity of avatars in metaverse

(Kumar et al. 2023). The virtual space also shows the

potential to amplify the issue of shyness among

introvert stakeholders, as users can hide behind the

anonymous avatars and share their opinion freely

without the fear of discrimination and judgment.

The metaverse holds the potential to break down

a great deal of obstacles and bring everyone up to

speed so they can all take use of technology made

available for the farming community and it could be

used as powerful tool for raising awareness and

promoting agricultural and allied sector. Therefore, it

is crucial to make metaverse technology accessible.

4.4 Meta-Verse for Economic

Dimension

When it comes to economic accessibility, it is proven

that technology on its own is not the solution for

digital divide. One needs to have greater balance on

economic condition to use and adapt to newly

introduced digital technologies. This becomes

additional major issues among the small and marginal

farmers of India, which is unavoidable. Therefore, It

is must to fund initiatives that aims to provide

affordable access to the digital world if it is to actually

close the digital divide. It is imperative to support

programs that aims at giving everyone access to high-

quality, reasonably priced, and dependable internet

(Rathore, 2018).

Today too many of the digital products used in

daily basis are too complex to use. In addition to

instructional initiatives, agricultural policy makers

should fund on technology that will be easy to use by

the farmers and every agricultural stakeholders; with

metaverse being the key example (Vidal-Tomas,

2023). Redefining technology usability itself is

crucial.

5 CONCLUSION

The physical world and its digital twins will be

interconnected in the metaverse's final stage,

allowing all human users in the real world to interact

Next-Generation Digital Networking Through Meta-Verse: A Cynosure for Indian Agriculture

125

with avatars and virtual objects located in both the

metaverse and the mixed reality in real-world

settings. In other words, there will be constant

influence between the real and virtual worlds. It is

vital to facilitate ubiquitous user interaction with

digital entities. Unlike most of the current technology

only permitting users to interact with the keyboard

and mouse pair, which is unable to faithfully replicate

the avatar's movements as required by the users or

learners. Therefore, technologies other than the

Internet, social networks, use of avatars and virtual

environments should be taken into consideration in

order to realize the metaverse. As the foundation of

the metaverse is provided by the development of

augmented reality and virtual reality, edge computing

and high-speed networks, artificial intelligence and

hyperledgers.

No matter how groundbreaking agricultural

technology is, it is only useful if farming community

adopts it. Hence, the metaverse opens opportunities to

use technology not just as a tool for advancement, but

as a tool for empowerment creating digital equity in

which all individual stakeholders of agricultural and

allied sector to have the information technology

capacity desired for full participation in farming

society and farm economy. In other words, the

metaverse ought to be discussed in public to create

collaborative solutions among the agricultural and

allied sector stakeholders. Finally, metaverse to make

an impact, it must become widely accepted.

FUNDING

No funding was received to assist with the

preparation of this manuscript.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Regarding the subject matter of this paper, the writers

have no relevant conflicts of interest to disclose

REFERENCES

Agarwal, A., Alathur, S., 2023. Metaverse revolution and

the digital transformation: intersectional analysis of

Industry 5.0. Transforming Government: People,

Process and Policy, 17(4), 688-707.

Chukkapalli, S. S. L., Mittal, S., Gupta, M., Abdelsalam,

M., Joshi, A., Sandhu, R., Joshi, K., 2020. Ontologies

and artificial intelligence systems for the cooperative

smart farming ecosystem. Ieee Access, 8, 164045-

164064.

Daponte, P., De Vito, L., Glielmo, L., Iannelli, L., Liuzza,

D., Picariello, F., Silano, G., 2019, May. A review on

the use of drones for precision agriculture. In IOP

conference series: earth and environmental science

(Vol. 275, No. 1, p. 012022). IOP Publishing.

Dixit, P., 2022. From AI to IoT: The Impacts on Metaverse

Marketing & Consumer Engagement. International

Journal of New Media Studies: International Peer

Reviewed Scholarly Indexed Journal, 9(2), 70-79.

Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Baabdullah, A. M., Ribeiro-

Navarrete, S., Giannakis, M., Al-Debei, M. M., Wamba,

S. F., 2022. Metaverse beyond the hype:

Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges,

opportunities, and agenda for research, practice and

policy. International Journal of Information

Management, 66, 102542.

Fu, Y., Li, C., Yu, F. R., Luan, T. H., Zhao, P., Liu, S., 2022.

A survey of blockchain and intelligent networking for

the metaverse. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 10(4),

3587-3610.

Gagliardi, G., Cosma, A. I. M., Marasco, F., 2022. A

decision support system for sustainable agriculture: The

case study of coconut oil extraction process. Agronomy,

12(1), 177.

Gasperini, L., Mclean, S., 2001. Education for Agriculture

and Rural Development in Low-Income Countries:

Implications of the Digital Divide.

Goswami, H., 2016. Opportunities and challenges of digital

India programme. International Education and

Research Journal, 2(11), 78-79.

Grieves, M., Vickers, J., 2017. Digital twin: Mitigating

unpredictable, undesirable emergent behavior in

complex systems. Transdisciplinary perspectives on

complex systems: New findings and approaches, 85-

113.

Grubert, J., Langlotz, T., Zollmann, S., Regenbrecht, H.,

2016. Towards pervasive augmented reality: Context-

awareness in augmented reality. IEEE transactions on

visualization and computer graphics, 23(6), 1706-

1724.

Khanal, S., Bhattarai, S. B. S., Adhikari, U., Sharma, D.,

Pandey, M., 2021. Disparities between developed and

emerging economies in digital divide and ICT gap to

bring agricultural sustainability. Fundamental and

Applied Agriculture, 6(3), 309-322.

Kumar, R., Kumar, P., Aljuhani, A., Islam, A. N., Jolfaei,

A., Garg, S., 2022. Deep learning and smart contract-

assisted secure data sharing for IoT-based intelligent

agriculture. IEEE Intelligent Systems.

Lee, L. H., Braud, T., Zhou, P., Wang, L., Xu, D., Lin, Z.,

Hui, P., 2021. All one needs to know about metaverse:

A complete survey on technological singularity, virtual

ecosystem, and research agenda. arXiv preprint

arXiv:2110.05352.

Lee, S. G., Trimi, S., Byun, W. K., Kang, M., 2011.

Innovation and imitation effects in Metaverse service

adoption. Service business, 5, 155-172.

ICEISA 2024 - International Conference on ‘Emerging Innovations for Sustainable Agriculture: Leveraging the potential of Digital

Innovations by the Farmers, Agri-tech Startups and Agribusiness Enterprises in Agricu

126

N. Stephenson, 1992. Snow Crash, 1st ed. United States:

Bantam Books (US).

Naikwade, R. R., Patle, B. K., Joshi, V. S., Pagar, N. D.,

Hirwe, S. B., 2022. Agriculture 5.0: Future of Smart

Farming.

Rameshwar, J. R., 2022. Caribbean metaverse

development: A literature review perspective. Journal

of Metaverse, 2(2), 83-99.

Rameshwar, J. R., Graham, K. İ. N. G., 2023. Analysis of

Caribbean XR Survey Creates an XR Development

Strategy as a Path to the Regional Metaverse Evolution.

Journal of Metaverse, 3(1), 43-65.

Rathore, B., 2018. Emergent perspectives on green

marketing: the intertwining of sustainability, artificial

intelligence, and the metaverse. International Journal

of New Media Studies: International Peer Reviewed

Scholarly Indexed Journal, 5(2), 22-30.

Rotz, S., Gravely, E., Mosby, I., Duncan, E., Finnis, E.,

Horgan, M., Fraser, E., 2019. Automated pastures and

the digital divide: How agricultural technologies are

shaping labour and rural communities. Journal of Rural

Studies, 68, 112-122.

Srivastava Umesh, 2022. Disruptive technologies: Shaping

the Future of Agriculture. Journal of AgriSearch

9(4):282-289.

Sun, J., Gan, W., Chao, H. C., Yu, P. S., 2022. Metaverse:

Survey, applications, security, and opportunities. arXiv

preprint arXiv:2210.07990.

Vidal-Tomás, D., 2023. The illusion of the metaverse and

meta-economy. International Review of Financial

Analysis, 86, 102560.

Viljoen, S., 2021. The promise and limits of lawfulness:

Inequality, law, and the techlash. Journal of social

computing, 2(3), 284-296.

Voinea, G. D., Gîrbacia, F., Postelnicu, C. C., Duguleana,

M., Antonya, C., Soica, A., & Stănescu, R. C., 2022.

Study of Social Presence While Interacting in

Metaverse with an Augmented Avatar during

Autonomous Driving. Applied Sciences, 12(22), 11804.

Wang, T., Xu, X., Wang, C., Li, Z., Li, D., 2021. From smart

farming towards unmanned farms: A new mode of

agricultural production. Agriculture, 11(2), 145.

Xi, N., Chen, J., Gama, F., Riar, M., Hamari, J., 2023. The

challenges of entering the metaverse: An experiment on

the effect of extended reality on workload. Information

Systems Frontiers, 25(2), 659-680.

Yankam, S Ramrao

S Garai, Gayathri. G. N ., & Alagu

Niranjan .D., 2019. Digital Divide: A constraint of

Accessibility or Engagement of Agricultural

Information . Int. Arch. App. Sci. Technol; Vol 10 [2]:

169- 180.

Next-Generation Digital Networking Through Meta-Verse: A Cynosure for Indian Agriculture

127