(GIST OF KURUKSHETRA) Precision Agriculture and IoT-based Solutions

[December-2020]

Precision Agriculture and IoT-based Solutions

Precision agriculture is an integrated and holistic technology-driven approach to manage the entire gamut of agricultural practices, so that agri-production costs are minimised and productivity/profitability of farmers is significantly increased. The Internet of Things (IoT) in agriculture is an emerging domain, where the farmers are enabled to take profitable decisions based on the real-time data and during the entire cropping cycle of agricultural production. The policy support, adequate timely financing and active involvement of major stakeholders in PA/IoT-based solutions will certainly enhance the desired benefits that can percolate down to the every-farmer/last-citizen in the rural India.

Precision Agriculture and its Significance:

The ‘Precision Agriculture’ (PA) which is also referred alternatively as ‘precision farming’, or ‘site-specific crop management’, or ‘prescription farming’ is one of the emerging systems in agriculture across the globe, since 1990s.
The PA describes the “process of technology enabled and integrated approach to agricultural crop management system that comprises the
observation, measurement, and analysis of the needs of individual fields of farmers and crops in the regions, so that the productivity and farmers’ income are significantly enhanced”. The precision agriculture adopts the general cycle with various components like observation, recording the data analysis/evaluation using IT-tools, making useful data-driven decisions using analytics, targeted management and effective implementation with close monitoring and evaluation, so that the agricultural productivity and profitability can be significantly increased. The PA extensively uses the technology-driven solutions for managing the entire set of ‘Agricultural Management Systems (AMS)’ for various interventions like:
Generating the on-site/on-farm data on continuous basis, about various agricultural practices (from sowing, growing of crops, till harvesting/post-harvest processing), thereby using the technological tools to enhance the yield, quality and profits for the farmers in the agricultural production systems.
Using remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), and robotics & analytics for data-driven decision making in farm management.
Adopting latest technologies like big-data and advanced-analytics capabilities, robotics, aerial imagery, sophisticated local weather forecasts, etc., by the farmers in growing agricultural crops. These will result in decreased in undue variations and enhanced stability in crop-yields, by adopting resilience to the changing climatic conditions.
Enhancing the Good Management Practices (GMPs) in agriculture, where technology will play the supportive, supplementary and complementary roles to reduce the farm input-costs and simultaneously improving the agricultural productivity.
Adopting the technology-based identification, analysis and managing the soil and nutrient management.
Using drones for spraying pesticides, insecticides, etc., so that input costs are optimised and issue of skilled-labour shortage (caused by rural-urban migration) are addressed. Embracing the sensor technologies for efficient and effective water use management, especially in irrigated farming systems, so that more agri-output can be produced, with less water-usage.
Reducing the cost of inputs used in farming and also to protect the crops from biotic stresses (like pests, diseases) and abiotic stresses (drought, heat/cold tolerance), thereby optimising the resource utilisation in most effective manner.
Improving the management of variability in space and time, which can result in the most-suitable use of agri-inputs and therefore increasing the profitability at all scales and levels of managing the agri-based systems/enterprises and natural resource management.
Equipping the agricultural-farmers with weather patterns and market intelligence information systems, so that the app-based technologies can mitigate/avoid their losses, which generally account for 30-35 percent of losses in farm produce in India.

Benefits of Adopting Precision Agriculture:

Precision agriculture is an integrated and holistic technology-driven approach to manage the entire gamut of agricultural practices, so that agri-production costs are minimised and productivity/profitability of farmers is significantly increased. The PA offers multiple advantages like:

(a) adopting the improved set of agricultural production practices and choice of crops, based on suitability of localised lands and climate;
(b) optimising the input-resources like water, fertilisers, plant-protection measures against pests-diseases;
(c) helping to minimise/avoid the wastages, by technological interventions;
(d) managing the water and soil nutrients for agriculture effectively,
(e) eliminating the risk and volatility in crop-production-systems, and;
(f) thus increasing the farmers-income through tech driven customised solutions.

Challenges in Adopting Precision Agriculture:

Although the precision agriculture has tremendous potential and range of benefits, it has a set of practical challenges as well, especially for the Indian agricultural-system, which include the following:
The information technology infrastructure systems and service facilities oriented to agricultural sector (which are locally accessible, cost-effective and user-friendly) are inadequate, unlike their availability and easy-accessibility to the industrial and service sectors.
The agriculture in India primarily consists of small and marginal land holdings (i.e., over 80 percent agricultural farms are with an average 1 hectare or 2.5 acres). Most of these small/marginal farmers are not fully-aware of the benefits of PA and they may comparatively take more time to adopt the PA-technologies, given the reality of lower literacy rates among them. Most of the Indian farmers are not familiar in using of technology-based agricultural systems and app-based decision-making-systems in farm management practices.
Socio-economic factors in villages, where Indian farmers are generally acquainted with their traditional systems of agricultural-practices, who are generally reluctant to try something new like PA/tech-driven-agriculture.
The banking and financial institutional systems have preferential bias in financing/funding the industrial/service sector, when compared to lending to the agricultural sector, owing to its uncertainty (as agricultural system’s dependence on rain/natural water resources, natural calamities like drought/floods, etc.).
There is a need of a paradigm-shift in the mind-set of all the stakeholders (including government, farmers, private players), who supply the agri-inputs, agricultural marketing systems, agri-product traders, banks and financial institutions, consumers, etc.

Way forward:

The precision agriculture is not only the need of the hour but also has the tremendous potential in increasing agricultural farm-incomes, facilitating empowerment of farming community and creating large scale impact in rural India.
The initiatives taken by Government of India are playing significant roles in fostering agriculture development and strengthening the rural India. The policy support, adequate-timely financing and active involvement of major stakeholders in PA/IoT-based solutions will certainly enhance the desired benefits that can percolate down to the every-farmer/last-citizen in the rural India.