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How technology investments are revolutionising the agriculture sector in India.
Technological interventions are taking over the world gradually. We are entering into the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0 with a focus on digitization and automation. With this, farming operations are no longer run with basic technology. Farmers and agriculturalists are too stepping ahead for agritech sophistication. There has been an aggressive investment in agritech approaches involving IoT (Internet of Things), smart logistics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Kisan drones and Machine Learning (ML). Given these practices, India’s agricultural sector has witnessed massively improved growth in the last two years, with exports touching an all-time high of about $50 billion.
Starting from awareness campaigns run by Non-Governmental Organisations to the Government of India’s aggressive push toward modernising India’s agricultural sector, the results will scale up further. As per a FICCI and PWC joint report, $500 million has already been invested in India’s agritech startups in 2020-2021. The agricultural arena today is one of the largest employers in the country, registering a growth of 3.6% in the pandemic-hit 2020-2021 and further rising to 3.9% in 2021-2022. Here is a look at some of the interventions that are modernising our agricultural infrastructure:
Drone tech investments to make farming less labour intensive
Drones are a popular farm tech tool used to spray agrochemicals and nutrition onto crops, This is now taking a major headway forward with the Indian agricultural drones market forecasted to achieve a four- figure rise by the year 2028. The projected CAGR in this domain is 25% during the period of 2022-2028. These unmanned aerial vehicles reduce the dependence on manual labour, enabling the spray of insecticides, pesticides and soil conditioners automatically, that too efficiently at time-specific intervals. This technology also supports monitoring yields through aerial photography, so farmers can inspect their fields without having to walk through the entire field on foot.
Recently, in May 2022, the Government of India inaugurated a programme to provide 50% or Rs. 5 lakh subsidies to SC/ST, small and women farmers for employing Kisan drones in their fields. For all other farmers, this subsidy amount was kept at 40% or up to Rs. 4 lakh. This aims to make agritech farming more affordable, which supports crop assessment, digitization of land records and spraying of vital agrochemicals on farms. Through this, the overall labour-intensive costs shall be reduced and farmers’ income will get an overall boost.
IoT investments to bring process automation to farming
The last few years have seen a rise in the concept of smart farming, wherein one of the major transformations has been the usage of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices for farm process automation. Sensors are being deployed on fields to measure the soil topography and assess the agrochemical needs of a particular area. These smart sensors are placed on fields, gather critical growth data and produce detailed analytics for farmers, who can view these readable insights on their smartphones. Even though the current adoption of this technology remains low, it has been projected that IoT-enabled connected agricultural practices are estimated to grow by three times by the year 2025.
Parameters like soil quality, water levels, moisture, plant diseases and temperature can be read by these IoT-enabled sensors to bring out insights for farmers and act out interventions accordingly. Further to this, IoT technology can also be enabled for water management in the fields, wherein water flow can be regulated on the basis of the moisture content in the soil or ambient air. In closed farming spaces or better known as Controlled-Environment Agriculture (CEA), IoT sensors enable strict environment checks like automatically regulating light brightness or even turning on water when required.
Investment in robust supply chains to reduce food wastage
As per statistics released by the United Nations, about 14% of food is lost between harvest and retail, while about 17% of total food production gets wasted globally. Taking into account India-specific statistics, about 45% of food produced in India is lost because of inefficient supply chains, and some estimates also, go on to state that this causes a monetary loss of about $14 billion a year. This can be solved by tech investments in a smart logistical infrastructure, that transports food with the least wastage.
Recently, the United States International Development Finance Corporation pumped in a loan of $5.5 million to one of India’s food supply chains startup to support the “farm-to-fork” supply chain approach. This means that products from farms reach consumers directly, through a technology-backed supply chain, and do away with a nexus of middlemen, eliminating wastage and losses. We need more funding for automation and platform-based tracking interventions in supply chains, especially when about 30% of the world’s population lacked adequate food in 2021.
In retrospect, the investments in the agritech sector are sure to revamp the entire segment and transition India’s approach from traditional farming to technologically backed automated farming solutions. These advanced solutions will empower farmers to become futuristic by enhancing profits, introducing safe practices and being more efficient. To reinforce this premise, a recent report published by Bain and Company, estimates that the agritech sector in India will attract $30-35 billion in investments by the year 2025, which is again a testament to the future full of possibilities through such tech interventions.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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