Precision Farming – From Production to Productivity
India is racing to become a $5 trillion economy in the next 5 years as per the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is imperative to double the farmers’ incomes in order to achieve this. However, with a rising scarcity of natural resources such as land and water, and increasing food insecurity because of population explosion, a paradigm shift is required in the agriculture sector from production to productivity and to profitability.
There is a need for promoting farmer-friendly location-specific production system management technologies in a concerted manner to achieve vertical growth in horticulture production dully ensuring the quality of products and better remuneration per unit of area with judicious use of natural resources.
In this endeavour, precision farming aims to have efficient utilisation of resources per unit of time and area for achieving targeted production of horticultural produce.
Precision farming is a comprehensive information based farm management system to identify, analyse and manage variability within fields for optimum profitability, sustainability and protection of land resources.
It is, therefore, efficient management of resources through location-specific high tech interventions which include fertigation, protected/ greenhouse cultivation, soil and leaf nutrient-based fertiliser management, mulching for in-situ moisture conservation, micro-propagation, high-density planting, drip irrigation etc.
Precision farming integrates environmental health, economic profitability and social and economic equity by giving emphasis on crop management using technologies like geographic information system (GIS), Global Positioning System (GPS), remote sensing (RS) along with ground equipment like variable-rate applicators (VRA), yield monitors and computers along with appropriate software.
Many technological developments including Information and communications technology and Geoinformatics led to the development of the concept of precision farming. Its success relies on the integration of these technologies into a single system that can be operated at the farm level with sustainable effort.
Precision farming is not only productive and profitable for the farmers but it is the right step in the right direction in terms of adoption of latest technology which in return ensures sustainable development.
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The CSR Journal Team
