Date: 06/09/2022

Relevance: GS-3: Major crop-cropping patterns in various parts of the country, – different types of irrigation and irrigation systems storage, transport, and marketing of agricultural produce and issues and related constraints; e-technology in the aid of farmers.

Key Phrases: Precision farming, Biodiversity, Traditional resources, Agricultural management, Big data analytics, Artificial intelligence, Agriculture productivity, Chemical application, Water resources, Socio-economic, Pesticides.

Context:

• In India, we have the culture of free power, free water, almost 80 to 90 per cent subsidy on urea, and so on. One critical factor that is needed is the political economy of policies. Precision farming needs to be promoted to get more output with less exploitation of natural resources

Why there is a question of the survival or prosperity of the human race?

• Lands are degrading, especially the topsoil that is crucial for providing us with food, animal feed and fiber.
• Groundwater is depleting and its quality is becoming poorer with the increasing use of chemical fertilizers and other industrial waste.
• The air that we breathe is becoming polluted at an alarming rate in certain parts of the world, especially in India, where at times it is difficult to even breathe in a city like Delhi when stubble burning peaks in farmers’ fields in Punjab and Haryana.
• As a result of many of these factors and some more, even biodiversity is taking a hit.
• Rising demands of an increasing and more aspirational population, putting a supply burden on the nature
• So, there is need to find solution to these problems. One such solution can lies in aggressively promoting precision farming.

What is Precision Agriculture?

• Precision farming uses modern technologies such as satellite imagery or field mapping to improve crop quality and profitability.
• It optimizes the use of traditional resources and promotes sustainable agriculture further allows solutions for both economic and ecological problems.
• It includes a range of technologies, including remote sensing, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, robotics, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence, to form an integrated crop production management system on a site-specific basis to increase profits, reduce waste, and keep the environmental quality.
• The important difference between precision farming and traditional agriculture is the ability to manage fields not as a single block but by dividing them into separate areas.
• Such zoning allows diversifying management decisions for individual field parts: adjusting the fertilizer amount, optimizing technique movement, and using fuel more frugally.

Why precision farming?

• To increase agriculture productivity.
• Prevents soil degradation.
• Reduction of chemical application in crop production.
• Efficient use of water resources.
• Dissemination of modern farm practices to improve quality, quantity and reduced cost of production.
• Developing favourable attitudes.
• Precision farming changes the socio-economic status of farmers.

How Precision Farming technique is beneficial?.

• Regular scouting, and monitoring:
  • A farmer with acres of fields cannot scout acre by acre as it is time-consuming, laborious, and ineffective.
  • Precision farming provides farmers with innovative tools and technologies to monitor their crops.
  • These include in-field wireless sensors, aerial drones, and satellites that eliminate farmers’ grunt work and provide them round-the-clock crop and field insights.
  • Consequently, farmers can monitor multiple crops and fields, follow their growth and health status and take timely interventions to increase crop yield. 
• Forecasting weather:
  • Considering how climate change affects different regions across the globe, it becomes vitally important to forecast uncontrollable weather factors to take preventive measures.
  • Precision technologies offer weather insights such as humidity, temperature, wind speed, etc., along with accurate forecasts, enabling farmers to protect their crops from extreme weather conditions, decide on farming practices in advance and mitigate the damages.
  • Precision farming provides farmers with current, historical, and future weather analytics to make informed decisions and increase crop yield.
• Optimizing irrigation, and fertilization:
  • Just as much as the weather is crucial in determining the fate of crop yield, so are irrigation and fertilization. A surplus or deficit of either can significantly affect the crop yield.
  • Precision farming gathers insights from in-field sensors to analyse soil moisture, leaf wetness, crop growth, etc., and recommend to farmers when and how to irrigate their fields.
  • Precision technologies identify the areas that require soil fertilization more than others so farmers can use fertilizers selectively and maximize crop yield. 
• Testing soil condition, and fertility:
  • Soil fertility influences a farmer’s decision to grow one plant or other and its cost.
  • To increase their crop yields, farmers must closely monitor their soil condition and quality throughout the growing season.
  • Precision technologies employ wireless sensors that monitor soil health, such as pH levels, moisture, temperature, salinity, etc., to allow farmers to gain insights into soil fertility.
  • Such a comprehensive analysis enables farmers to allocate minerals, fertilizers, and irrigation accordingly and maximize their crop yield. 
  • Variable Rate Technology allows growers to apply fertilizer, chemicals, seeds, etc. to a different parts of a field depending on their needs. Also, farmers can test the soil for nutrients, such as nitrogen, and feed only those areas that lack certain nutrients.
• Protecting from weeds, and pests:
  • Agrarians cannot maximize their crop yield unless they minimize the impact of weeds, pests, or diseases.
  • A single weed or pest infestation can spread like wildfire from field to field if overlooked.
  • Physical inspection acre by acre can be a herculean task, precision farming allows farmers to sit back and supervise their crops from their screens.
  • Depending on the problem, farmers use several measures such as herbicides, insecticides, desiccants, fungicides, etc., to protect their crops and maximize their yield.
  • With timely area-specific alerts, farmers can protect their crops from weeds, pests, and diseases. 

Limitations of precision farming:

• Initial capital costs may be high and so it should be seen as a long-term investment.
• Lack of technical expertise knowledge and technology.
• Not applicable or difficult/costly for small land holdings.
• Heterogeneity of cropping systems and market imperfections.
• Extremely demanding work particularly collecting and then analysing the data.

Way ahead:

• The policy approach to promote precision farming at farm level is needed. It contains:
  • Identify the niche areas for the promotion of crop specific precision farming.
  • Creation of multidisciplinary teams involving agricultural scientists in various fields, engineers, manufacturers and economists to study the overall scope of precision agriculture
  • Provide complete technical backup support to the farmers to develop pilots or models, which can be replicated on a large scale
  • Pilot study should be conducted on farmers’ fields to show the results of precision agriculture implementation
  • Creating awareness among farmers about consequences of applying imbalanced doses of farm inputs like irrigation, fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides.
• Technology is evolving at a breakneck speed and the Indian government along with agtech companies can create successful smart agriculture value chains by digitally empowering the famers and providing them with
• wealth creation prospects as we progress as a nation.
• With precision technologies, farmers can make the best of accurate allocation of resources, minimum agrarian efforts, and timely alerts and analytics to maximize crop yields and secure the future of future generations and the planet. 

Source: Indian Express  

Mains Question:

Q. Why there is a question of survival or prosperity of the human race? How Precision farming can promote sustainable farming practices? Discuss.