Emerging tech can address major agricultural challenges: Experts

The Indian agriculture sector contributes around 18% to the Indian GDP and is one of the major employers in the country. The rising urban and rural populations are dependent on the agrarian sector, following which the demand is robust and expected to grow further.

Besides satiating India’s needs, the agriculture sector is also driving exports and in the coming years, the sector is poised to generate better momentum.

But, how? To able to meet the robust demand, the sector has to deploy various mechanisms to release farmer’s stress, increase soil productivity, double farmer’s income and provide them with innovative methods to step up farming methods.

Here, technology can play a pivotal role in helping the agriculture sector grow further. To discuss how digital technologies can transform agriculture sector, how small farmers can benefit out of digital innovations and how tech can play an important in doubling farmer’s income, top minds of the industry sat down for a discussion under ‘Cisco Idea Lab’ Agriculture Segment in association with CNBC-TV18.

Experts MJ Khan, Chairman, Indian Chamber of Food & Agriculture; Kiran Karnik, former President, Nasscom; Vivek Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture; Harish Krishnan, MD-Public Affairs & Strategic Engagements, Cisco Systems, India & SAARC; Pravesh Sharma, Co-founder& CEO, Kamatan Farm Tech; and Ramanan Ramanathan, Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), focussed on stressed areas of agriculture industry and deliberated on how tech can solve major woes of the farmers.

“In terms of contribution of agriculture to the economy, it is declining over the years, largely because the value addition that should have been, it is not there. So, now the whole focus of the government and the country is shifting from production to post-production. Here, startups are playing a crucial role. The role of digital technology is very important,” said Khan.

Experts discussed how digital technology can address few specific areas of the sector on an immediate basis.

“There are two aspects of it… one is supply chain-from farm to your table-there are huge losses, middlemen and the farmer gains the minimum. Secondly, it is the productivity at the farm itself because if you compare us with international figures, other countries and those at equal levels of our development, many of them have yields than us in many cases and even within the country the yield differences are huge given similar conditions. In both the cases, technology can play an important role,” said Karnik.

Another set of challenge that India is staring at is the low output per hectare as the country is among nations with lowest hectare production. To address this issue, the government is taking up a slew of initiatives to drive efficiency and productivity for farmers.

“Government of India has been very conscious and we have programmes like bringing green revolution to eastern India, building seed hubs to have better seeds for pulses in the country, especially focussed on areas rice-fallow areas, where they don’t grow anything after the paddy crop comes in and those fallow lands are being used to grow pulses. These initiatives in the last few years have resulted in production growth of pulses to 25 lakh MT from 16 lakh MT and we are almost self-sufficient. There is a massive role of technology now to go further. We have satellite imagery, we can have soil moisture measurement, ground sensors, ground truthing for production analysis. So, we can look at precision and smart agriculture is the new mantra,” said Agarwal.

To give momentum to the sector and help famers with better farming and irrigation practices, many stakeholders have already begun to use digital tech such as Internet of Things (IoT).

“We might see ubersiation of technology where small and marginal farmers are able to afford these technologies at lower costs. A simple solution of IoT that we have put to use in Bihar is that we have put a very simple IoT motor pump by which the farmer is able to sit in his house, he gets a notification when electricity comes in the farm, he also gets a notification on the soil moisture, whether it needs watering or not, and he’s able to switch on the motor pump from where he is and switch it off. This prevents over-irrigation, lets a farmer use lost-cost technology for high yield,” said Krishnan.

During the discussions, the stalwarts also discussed the role of startups in addressing the challenges of the agrarian sector.

“We need to go back and both policy and private investment have to look at this as an investible item as something that is going to yield value for them down the road,” said Sharma.

“There are world-class incubators being set-up across the country and Atal Innovation Mission is focussing that these are theme-based incubators, so you have agri-tech, biotech, water management incubators and so on and each incubator is given a grant of Rs 10 crore by the government so they can foster 25-30 startups every two years. We found that 130 of them are agri-tech startups. So, there is a large focus because of the thrust that the government has also been making on farm productivity, increase market access, how do you reduce the cost of farming and double the farmer’s income,” said Ramanathan.

Indeed, startups are using number of technologies such as IoT, drone tech, etc to address the plight of farmers, identify problem areas, define them, help in better production, post-harvest, supply chain, market related issues.

Another ambitious scheme that the government has taken up is to double the farmer’s income by 2022. To address this, market access cannot be looked in isolation.

“There should be a greater integration of producers with the market. Merely de-licensing or APMC reform won’t lead to private sector establishing long-term relationship with farmers. It will have to be a much larger relationship which begins with production,” said Sharma.

Meanwhile, experts also did a deep-dive into sustainable farming practices, data analytics in agricultural practices, climate-smart agriculture, mapping soil health with drones, 3D imaging, etc.

Watch the full video here.