Precision farming to double farm income, says expert

Farmers can come out of the vicious cycle of high costs and low income if they adopt market-led value-addition programmes and use appropriate technologies to cut costs and enhance production, said an agri expert.

Doubling farmers income is today’s catch word even though there are constraints to achieve the goal. TP Sethumadhavan, a visiting research fellow of University of Reading, UK, said that the emergence of agriculture start-ups, promotion of agri entrepreneurship model, etc would definitely enhance production. The access to credit, water and market would also propel production growth. But it requires better storage and post-harvest technologies.

However, he emphasised the need to make substantial changes in the farming practices by adopting precision farming using innovation and technologies.

Sethumadhavan, who is the former Director of Entrepreneurship at the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, said that precision farming uses sensors, satellite images, drones, internet of things for soil analysis, monitoring, irrigation, etc with innovative farm management and appropriate extension network.

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