Ishaan Mahajan
There is a question in everyone’s mind about how our country would cope with the rising population and global climatic changes? So let us look into this matter and see what might be the solution. As Che Guevara once said, “The revolution is not an apple that falls when it ripens; you have to make it fall”. Therefore, the best answer to the above question is revolutionizing the system like what we did during the 1960s and 1990s. The First Agricultural Revolution in India, which exponentially increased the yield of food crops and saved millions of lives, came in form of the Green Revolution in the 1960s. The second revolution came in form of the Biotechnological Revolution in the 1990s, which shaped our agriculture to a new direction in form of tissue culture techniques, GM crops, Transgenics etc.
So now, we not only have to look for improving the present situation but also keep the future in mind and environmental safety. We can see around us, the surge in digital technologies and witness them transforming all the sectors of the economy and the society in innumerable ways. Communications, banking, payments, travel, energy, healthcare, taxation, and governance have significantly benefited by deploying digital solutions. Agriculture and allied sectors call for the need for digital disruption to convert the challenges of agriculture into opportunities for betterment. Hence, the third wave of revolution or what we call the Digitalization Wave focuses on the digital aspect. It is this newest shift in agriculture that would help ensure that agriculture meets the needs of the global population in the future. Through its impact on agriculture, this digital revolution has huge potential to reduce poverty throughout developing regions. According to a recent World Economic Forum article, growth in the agricultural sector can be at least twice as effective in reducing poverty, as growth in other sectors and the interventions that incorporate new digital technologies are believed to show accelerated agricultural growth. To start with, this Digitalization can increase farmers’ resilience to various shocks. By increasing farmers access to weather and market information, these digital technologies can help them make more informed decisions regarding when and which crops to plant, as well as when and where to sell those crops. Other vital components like the targeted applications of fertilizers, Pesticides, deployment of field robots, drones, soil analysis, sensors, crop yield monitoring, production forecasting and many more can be predicted via remote sensing technology approaches or by Artificial Intelligence under this revolution. In addition, it can aggregate smallholder farmers in remote locations, making it easier for agribusinesses and processors to work with them. Traditionally, both traders and farmers spend huge amounts of time travelling to and from individual farms to negotiate contracts, assess crops, and collect loans and payments. Using mobile technologies to manage the business side of things – from establishing farmer contracts to making payments and sending receipts – helps cut down on both time aspects and transportation costs, thus, making businesses more willing to work with remote farmers. Moving on, as we now know that Remote Sensing and Artificial Intelligence are the key components of Digitalization in agriculture, we have to know what exactly they are and how they are helpful for the farmers. Both of them are of utmost importance because we can acquire information or data through a device, which is not in contact with the object or area under investigation. Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays a vital role in boosting agriculture and farming thus helping agriculture-based economies to grow. Agriculture can take benefit from emerging technologies like AI-based Automated Robotic Systems to optimize irrigation, crop monitoring, farming, automatic spraying and optimize the exercise of pesticides and herbicides. Artificial intelligence in agriculture helps to control pests, organize farming data, produce healthier crops, reduce workload, and many more. Many mobile applications are also available that leverage the power of AI to facilitate farmers by offering a variety of functions from better trade opportunities to control and boost the field yield like the Plantix Application. It is a mobile crop advisory application for farmers, extension workers or even gardeners, which helps to diagnose pest damages, plant diseases and nutrient deficiencies affecting crops and offers corresponding treatment measures. Drones and planes help in collecting aerial data, which is as helpful as ground data in analysing farm conditions. The technology uses computer vision algorithms along with image annotation that favours farmers in finding potential problems and their solutions. Drones, planes, and satellites can do analyzing and data collection jobs at a much faster rate than humans can. AI has provided much automation in agriculture that helps farmers to monitor their crops even when they are not in the fields. Many companies are working further to improve technology development in agriculture to not only introduce automated methods but also protect crops yield from other factors like environmental changes, population growth. These new AI-based innovations will also provide a lot of employment opportunities for many people and will redefine traditional methods to boost efficiency and crop production rate with advanced approaches. Smart agriculture comes with software for picking and harvesting crops, fighting weeds and pests, analyzing weather and soil conditions. Investment in this smart field means increasing the chances of higher productivity and balancing quality food requirements. AI-powered technologies will help to compete with industry challenges, and in future, there will be a steady adoption of AI in the agricultural field.
Further moving on, there was recently a paper released on the India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA) from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (MoA&FW) which talked about a digital revolution in the agriculture sector. The aim of it was ‘The farmer and the improvement of farmer’s livelihood’, which will happen through tight integration of agri-tech innovation and the agriculture industry ecosystem to farming and food systems. Its principles explicitly talk about openness of data, which means open to businesses and farmers, indicating the integration. Value-added innovative services by agri-tech industries and start-ups are an integral part of its architecture. Its main objective was to enable the farmer to realize higher income and better profitability through access to the right information at the right time, and from innovative services. To enable better planning and execution of policies, programmes and schemes of the Central and State governments, the private sector Farmers Producer Organizations (FPOs). Other objectives were to enhance efficiencies in the usage of resources including land, water, seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and farm mechanization by providing easier access to information and to build capacities across the gamut of digital agriculture and precision agriculture and to give a fillip to R&D and Innovations in agriculture through access to high-quality data and finally to adopt the best principles of cooperative federalism while working with the states and union territories for the realization of the vision of IDEA. It is clear that its role is important in developing country’s growth but there are some issues or constraints regarding the Adoption of these Technologies like Potential of Data Misuse, Digital Disruption is a Double-Edged Sword, Content of the information shared, Reaction of the Farmers against Reforms, Lack of Awareness. A majority of small and marginal farmers are not technology-savvy. Hence, most of them are under-educated for capacity building. However, more investments into the agriculture sector can benefit farmers. While agreeing on the fact that a data revolution is inevitable in the agriculture sector, given its socio-political complexities, we cannot just count on technology fixes and agri-business investments for improving farmers’ livelihoods. This capacity building can be done through a mixed approach preferably building the capacities of individual farmers or coping with the new situation by establishing support systems, through FPOs and other farmers associations where technical support is available for farmers. Considering the size of the agriculture sector of the country this is not going to be an easy task but would need a separate programme across the country with considerable investment. Challenge is that we are good at creating tech, but agriculture needs value also. We are not able to prioritize and put it in terms of value for stakeholders. There are some adopting recommendations as per the report of the World Bank, which is, strengthening access to foundation data and promoting data sharing, Safeguarding farmers’ data and privacy, reviewing the regulations that constrain precision farming, enabling competition in digital markets, supporting the development of digital payment systems, supporting the digital entrepreneurship ecosystem and Investing in R&D. Influential factors which will define the success of digital agriculture in India are technology affordability, ease of access and operations, easy maintenance of systems and supportive government policies.
Thus, adopting a holistic ecosystem approach to address challenges faced by the Indian agriculture sector is of national interest, to achieve objectives, like doubling farmer incomes and sustainable development. Thus, a multi-stakeholder approach will be required for the wide-scale adoption of digital agriculture in India, with the government playing a key enabler’s role in the ecosystem. Therefore, it can be concluded that in the upcoming years’ Indian farmers would feel the compulsion of improving the food and nutritional security along with keeping in mind all other aspects discussed earlier. “The Digital India” is all set to transfer the interface of the country socio-economic dynamics. The scenario opens the shop for innovations and opportunities thus our country is going to witness a change leading to transformation in the next 10-20 years.
