While farmers have been utilising simple technology platforms such as messaging apps and social media websites to gather information, they haven’t addressed issues such as personalized data accumulation and management
By Mohnish Sharma
As India is at the pinnacle of its digital revolution, we find that technology has penetrated every aspect of our lives. While almost every sector has embraced technology and has advanced a great deal, agriculture is still at a nascent stage when it comes to the adoption of technology. While farmers have been utilising simple technology platforms such as messaging apps and social media websites to gather information, they haven’t addressed issues such as personalized data accumulation and management. It is imperative for the farmer to have extensive data about crucial factors that affect farming such as weather history, water usage, soil health, crop conditions and infestations. Unavailability of this data can cause delay in taking timely and informed decisions that can ultimately affect the yield of the crop.
Since almost 50% of the Indian population engages in agriculture, it is imperative that the latest technology solutions be made available to the farmers to optimize the production, generate more yield and profit. The following is a list of five technology solutions that will trigger a new phase of growth and momentum for agriculture sector in our country:
1. Chatbots for Farmers
Chatbots have been in the limelight for some time now. Till date, this technology has been applied primarily in the e-commerce sector and on social media platforms, however, it would prove to be more useful and face tremendous success in the agriculture sector. The advantages of this program are easy accessibility and that it can be updated (with new information disease, technology, government schemes) from time to time. Since the front-end is a chat interface, and most farmers in India have become accustomed to SMS or WhatsApp, this does not require any behavioural change in farmers. Secondly, since this is a technology platform, scaling it and making it available across the country is not a problem.
2. Data Collection for Farmers
Farmers generally do not keep a record of the condition of their farms. As a result, they do not have an accurate record of things such as soil condition, crops planted, fertilizer used, irrigation requirements, pest attacks, crop yields and so on, over a period of years. While they rely on their memory, a few facts are bound to be overlooked. On the other hand, any new advisor or a consultant who is working to help a farmer has to gather the data repeatedly. One solution is to create a platform that has the potential to capture all farm related data. The data can be accumulated from multiple sources – the farmer, government resources, consultants and furthermore, can help the farmer to take action tailored to his farm needs.
3. Visual Recognition Tool for Crop Diseases
Visual recognition technology has witnessed tremendous progress over the past few years, so much so that Facebook and Google users can recognize and tag faces in photographs. The same technology can be leveraged to identify diseases in plants. A farmer can take a photograph of a plant with a disease and upload it to a central server. The server can scan its repository of diseases and send the responses that indicate the possible pests/diseases and some potential solutions. This technology would save time in treating the disease and thus, would save the yield of the crop. Therefore, the farmer would incur less or no loss of money.
4. Drone Farming
A few companies in India have started manufacturing drones for farming. Since drones can be used for multiple purposes such as information gathering (in the form of photographs and videos), product (pesticides, fertilizers) delivery, sowing, spraying disinfectants, monitoring and surveying the fields and more, they make the life of a farmer easier. For an agrarian country like India, drone farming can prove to be essential in the automation of various agricultural tasks. Drone farming is already being tested in states such as Gujarat, Punjab and so on.
5. Wearable Technology for Farming
We are currently witnessing widespread adoption of wearable technology in the form of fitness bands and smart watches globally. But today, I want to talk about the smart glasses. Smart glasses boost efficiency and quality of work by saving time and optimising tasks. Even though these haven’t been made available to the mass markets as of now, the future isn’t far away wherein the smart glasses will be embraced be every industry, agriculture being one of them. Smart glasses will enable farmers to record data and search for information in real time, while being completely hands free. This will help the farmer to instantly identify anomalies, record voice notes and much more.
The author is CEO of DestaGlobal