New Delhi, (Asian independent) The government on Friday announced that 50 per cent of farms would be under precision farming in the next 25 years.
The Ministry of Agriculture has been pushing for digitalisation in agriculture sector and to this effect, over the last few years, has signed a number of MoUs with private companies, including Microsoft and also AgTech (Agricultural technology) companies such as AgriBazar.
Referring to 10 MoU and the works going on in the sector, Joint Secretary, Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Pramod Meherda said, “There are 32 more players. They have evinced interest in working with us, with the farmers. We are taking our time to analyse the requirement.”
Referring to the Committee on Doubling of Farmers’ Income that had supported digital technology playing a transformational role in agricultural practices, be it using remote sensing, be it data analytics, drones, or internet etc, Meherda said, the digitalisation of agriculture will only be increasing, as more and more youngsters take to technology and there is an increasing penetration of smart phones for decision support systems and there will be more precision farming using all this technology to increase productivity.
“In the Amritkaal, i.e. the next 25 years, a total of 50 per cent of farms will be under precision farming,” Meherda said at a seminar on Digitalisation in Agriculture here.
During her Budget 2022-23 speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had, introducing and promoting digitisation in agriculture sector, talked of launching a scheme in public private partnership mode for delivery of digital and hi-tech services to farmers with involvement of public sector research and extension institutions along with private agri-tech players and stakeholders of agri-value chain.
