With the growing popularity of precision farming in industrialised countries, where workforce is a major limitation in managing large farms, for increasing food production with least damage to the environment, experts here feel the need for adoption of the same here.
While speaking at a workshop on ‘Strategies and Tools for Adoption and Implementation of Precision Agriculture’, jointly organised by the International Plant Nutrition Institute, South Asia Programme, Acharya NG Ranga Agricultural University and the Indian Society of Soil Science (Hyderabad chapter), former deputy director-general of Indian Council of Agricultural Research EA Siddiq said that it is high-time for India to step up production of food grains by 70 per cent in order to feed the growing population.
“It requires an appropriate precision farming strategy, keeping in view our future food needs, natural resource constraints, high costs of crop production and inevitable adverse impact of climate change,” he said.
International Plant Nutrition Institute’s South Asia programme director Kaushik Majumdar said that the concept of precision farming, that is particularly suited to large farms, needed to be reviewed in the context of global food security, climate change, high production targets and precise management of inputs among various other factors.
With the use of small and smart electronic devices like Agri Crabs or Mobile Robots, farmers in the Western world investigate and record moisture availability, nutrient status, plant diseases and pest problems of individual plants and address them using corrective measures, he said.