The Hindu Business Line : Technologies seeding change in farm sector

The ‘Green Revolution’ did help India achieve self sufficiency in food grain production. But today, the Indian agricultural sector is facing a series of new challenges.

The sector is growing at a much slower pace of less than 2 per cent per annum whereas the overall GDP growth rate is about 9 per cent. For the same area under cultivation, the average productivity of the Indian agriculture sector is significantly lowe r than that of developed nations.

Post harvest losses in the horticulture (fruits & vegetables) sector, account for almost 30 per cent of total production.

With increasing urbanisation, growing population and depletion of scarce natural resources like water, increasing agricultural productivity is the only option left to meet the growing demand for food.

Demand for bio-fuels is increasing exponentially with rapid rise of crude oil prices and several nations across the globe including India mandating some percentage blend of bio-fuels to gasoline/diesel. As most of the bio-fuels feedstock is agriculture produce, it is posing additional challenges for the agricultural sector.

Emerging Trends

In view of these national level challenges, several encouraging trends have been emerging in recent years. The most important one being marketing reforms for the agricultural produce. These reforms will lead to better farm gate price and also pave the way for contract farming, since the non-value adding intermediaries in the agricultural supply chain will be eliminated. The Government’s encouragement of the food processing sector through subsidies, establishing food parks and allowing 100 per cent FDI in infrastructure is heartening as well.

The shelf life of perishable agricultural produce can be improved significantly through processing as currently as only 2 per cent of the produce is processed whereas in developed nations it is almost 30-40 per cent.

Export of agricultural commodities is another area that is gaining attention with increased participation from the corporate sector.

These trends indicate a significant opportunity for the Indian farming community provided quality and productivity challenges are met. Technology adoption coupled with the right social policies can be of great help in addressing these challenges.

Key Technologies

Several technological advances in bio-technology, scientific farming and marketing of agricultural produce demonstrated elsewhere in the world could be leveraged, customizing them for the Indian scenario.

Opportunities for technology deployment in the farming cycle involves three stages, namely, crop production, post-harvest management, and marketing from a farmer’s perspective.

Production Technologies

Crop planning plays a very significant role. At this stage besides finances, the most important decision of selecting the crop for cultivation is taken.

Standard crop rotation practices, expected market price, crop cycle time, soil and season are analyzed. Collectively these decisions may have a greater impact in terms of either creating a market glut or shortage.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) like statistical modelling, forecasting and data analytics technologies for market supply/demand analysis, weather modelling and crop yield predictions can be developed at a macro level.

Moving on to cultivation, appropriate seed selection plays a major role in determining productivity. Bio-technology offers much promise in terms of high yielding seed varieties and new pest resistant seeds.

Through scientific farming practices it is possible to ascertain, the effects of weather, pest infestation on yield and the optimal amount of nutrients required.

Drip irrigation, as a farming practice has been gaining popularity. Drip irrigation provides the right amount of water at the right location – at the plant root zone and has many advantages over conventional flood method of irrigation, like higher yield, water/energy savings, lesser weeds, etc.

Most drip irrigation solutions require a water source and pump and quality water, availability of power and maintenance and agriculture knowledge.

Though subsidies are provided by the Government on initial investments, there is the additional cost of system maintenance, and the challenges of having the necessary infrastructure and technical support within a community to maintain these systems effectively.

Information dissemination and management is another area where technology platforms based on social networking such as Web 2.0 can help to inculcate scientific farming practices, help agriculturists share farming knowledge and best farming practices.

Post-harvest Technologies

Post harvest management though a crucial phase has been ignored for quite sometime and has been gaining significant attention in recent years. Post harvest technologies can help in minimising wastage and improve the shelf life while maintaining the quality of the produce.

These technologies include automatic grading and sorting of produce, sensors for checking produce quality, packing and cold chain infrastructure for improving the shelf life of perishables and effective energy management and maintenance of the cold chain infrastructure, efficient logistics for transporting the agriculture produce, etc. Various sensors coupled with RFID technology are being mandated through international standards to track and establish traceability in the food supply chain. These standards will become mandatory in coming years and Indian exporters are expected to adhere to these standards.

Marketing

Information and communication technologies (ICT) play a major role collating and disseminating market related information. Newer approaches and models are being tested to accurately gather both demand and supply related data. Commodity exchanges have been gaining lot of popularity and futures trading offers the benefit of risk mitigation to farmers. But adequate training and understanding in futures trading is essential in order to reap the benefits.

Before deploying new technology in the agricultural sector, various factors such as technology maturity and robustness, short and long term investments by various stakeholders, availability of necessary infrastructure and the support systems required, need to be evaluated.

For example protected cultivation offers numerous benefits in terms of high yields by protecting crop from adverse weather and pest infestations.

Multi-faceted approach

By the same measure, the results could be disastrous if the correct farming practices are not adopted. Also, it requires involvement of multi disciplinary experts – agronomists to identify appropriate markets for the produce and to justify the investments, technologists to establish correct farming practices, like soil quality management, micro-nutrient management, water management experts, etc. in order to customise these solutions for particular regions.

The required farming practices need to be experimented through field trials along with farmers and the results of these studies along with risks need to be evaluated. Challenges of scaling up some of these technologies can only be understood through field trials with farmers. In conclusion, an integrated multidisciplinary approach coupled with necessary support systems is key to any successful, scalable and sustainable technology deployment to have a significant impact.

The farming community has realised the potential available to them and is taking steps to leverage the benefits to the optimum.

(The author is Leader, Research Automation Technologies, Honeywell Technology Solutions.)

More Stories on : Agriculture | Insight | Technology

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Unmistakeable signals

Case for total farm loan waiver

Technologies seeding change in farm sector

The politics of polarisation

Do not play with fire!

Season of politics

‘A vote of confidence in the Indian operations’

Sub-prime crisis

Quitting cashew sector jobs