Monday, 20 September 2021

“ Tractor-Pulled “ to “ Technology-Pushed “

That could be the name of the next chapter in the “ History of Indian Agriculture “

I am talking about a “ Ground-Breaking Reform “ just ushered by Shri Tomar ( Agri Minister )

Context :

Centre inks 5 deals for digital agri push / HT / 15 Sept 2021

Extract :

The ministry of agriculture signed agreements with five firms on Tuesday to push a project to harness big data from the farm sector for a digitised platform known as “Agri Stack”, a move officials said would help bring new technologies and private investment in the country’s primary sector.

A ministry’s statement said Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar oversaw the signing of agreements with five companies: CISCO, Ninjacart, Jio Platforms Limited, ITC Limited and NCDEX e-Markets Limited (NeML).

“Modernisation of the agriculture sector will continue by infusing new technologies so that farmers can increase their income,” the statement said.

Tuesday’s agreements would pave the way for pilot projects which will allow farmers to “take informed decisions on

# what crop to grow,

# what variety of seed to use and

# what best practices (sic) to adopt to maximise the yield”

===================================================

Agristack: The New Digital Push in Agriculture / 26 June 2021

Extract :

o Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Microsoft to run a pilot programme for 100 villages in 6 states.

The MoU requires Microsoft to create a ‘Unified Farmer Service Interface’ through its cloud computing services.
It is a collection of technologies and digital databases that focuses on farmers and the agricultural sector.
AgriStack will create a unified platform for farmers to provide them end to end services across the agriculture food value chain.

o Under the programme, each farmer will have a unique digital identification (farmers’ ID) that contains,

# personal details,

# information about the land they farm, as well as

# production and financial details.

Among the new proposed digital farming technologies and services under the programme include,

# Sensors to monitor cattle,

# Drones to analyse soil and apply pesticide,

- may significantly improve the farm yields and boost farmers' incomes.

Problems such as,

# Inadequate access to credit and information,

# Pest infestation,

# Crop wastage,

# Poor price discovery and

# Yield forecasting

- can be sufficiently addressed by use of digital technology.

My Take :

Earlier I had sent following suggestions to our Cabinet Minsters :

Ø Influence farmers and win Votes ? [ 04 Feb 2019 ]

Extract :

Can we take help of TECHNOLOGY to solve these problems ?

Yes , of course !

We need technologies which will , dynamically / automatically , compute for each crop ,

# Costs of all the INPUTS (water-fertilizer-seeds-power –labour ), based on

NORMS

# OUTPUTS from the area of land owned by these farmers ( in Kg )

# MSP ( since INPUTS will vary from crop-to-crop and area-to-area )

# Transfer the MSP amount to Jan Dhan bank accounts of each beneficiary

farmer ( DBT )

It is possible to get our constellation of 7 NaviC satellites to “ map / geotag “ , each and every farm ( with a resolution of 1 meter ) and calculate its area

This can be verified by using technology offered by…. what3words

For each type of crop , INPUT NORMS are already established , using historical data

OUTPUTS NORMS ( kg / acre ) for different crops , are statistically established figures

“ Agricultural Crop Assessment “ is being offered by Planet , BlackSky, Satellogic

“ Humidity Sensors “ developed by Dr Shalini Prasad

As far as CROP INSURANCE is concerned, Remote Sensing Satellites are already being deployed

I realize that experts ( agriculture and economy ) might laugh , if I urge Shri Modiji :

“ Give our Scientists and Software Engineers a chance to develop such a TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM , based on the following matrix, which will ensure DBT to our farmers, within 24 hours of pre-determined EVENTS or DATES or CABINET DECISION ANNOUNCEMENTS, without the delay and arbitrariness of “ human intervention “