Farming is done from ancient times, and farmers are the backbone of farming. Farmers working hard in producing food in the fields for the world. In olden times, farming was a total labour intensive technique that involved huge amounts of time and effort. As time changes, labour intensive techniques turn into capital intensive that provide high production with less effort. Smart Farming or smart agriculture in India is necessary that can help farmers to enhance their production and income.
In this 21st century, where phones are smarter than humans and our farmers depend on monsoon, which determines whether they can sow their crop or not. That shows an extreme need to elevate Indian farming. This time, we come with smart farming in India with techniques and solutions. This blog can help you to increase your farm productivity with fewer efforts.
What is Smart Farming?
First of all, we have to know about smart farming. Smart farming is the best farming techniques that involve higher and advanced productivity with existing farming practices. It used to enhance production efficiency and the quality of farming products. With all this, smart farming techniques increase farmer’s quality of living by minimising heavy and monotonous work.
In short, we can say that smart farming is all about reducing waste, developing productivity and full use of resources with remote sensing. Smart farming is known by precision farming too. It involves using various smart farming technologies, the internet of things (IoT) devices, big data analytics, remote sensing, artificial intelligence and robotics. It is scientifically proven that using these technologies increases profit, minimises waste and maintains the environment’s quality.
Support from Central Government in Smart Farming
The central government of India plays an active role in developing the agri-tech sector. They always come up with new bills to empower Indian farmers. The Indian government supports smart farming because they want to reduce their effort and enhance their productivity. At present, they are working to double the farmers’ income by 2022. They want to increase farmers’ income with minimum efforts by smart farming ideas. For this, the NITI Aayog collaborates with the companies that include IBM for technology-driven solutions. For these farmers get real time advice and are financed to increase crop productivity.
Along with this, the government of India plans to digitize the PACS (Primary Agricultural Credit Society) with a grant up to INR 2000 crore. Other supports that initiated by the government for smart farming are MANAGE (Management of Agricultural Extension in Hyderabad), mentoring the agri-tech start-ups, PMKSY (Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana), and One Nation One Market.
Are Agri-tech products affordable for the farmers?
Hi-tech and technologically advanced products indeed provide comfortable work with high productivity. If smart farming is not affordable for the farmers, even if they want to adopt smart farming, they won’t. Most of the Indian farmers have limited income that prevents farmers from using the digital revolution in farming. Therefore, start-up agri-tech must prepare their products and services based on the farmer’s budget to get the full benefits.
Innovative Technologies to Enhance Smart Farming
Indian people are slightly an orthodox type. They believe that those methods or ancient practices used from ancient times are the best for agriculture. But with the growing population and advanced times that methods should change too. For that, Indian farmers have to adopt innovative technologies to enhance smart farming. Following we are showing some technologies which should be enhanced.
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Product innovations
There is a requirement for innovation in products. Those products which are growing from olden times that need to be updated. For that, new technologies introduced in the market which are designing fully new kinds of foods. Those products which are impossible to grow are tested in lab-grown.
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Digital marketplaces
The government of India started an eNAM facility for the farmers of India. The eNAM (National Agriculture Market) is an electronic trading portal which creates networks between the existing APMC mandis for the farmers all over India. Its main aim is to promote equality in the agriculture market. From this plan smoothness between the buyers and sellers created and it promotes real time price too.
And digital marketplace permits farmers to lease equipment, connect to local customers, or pool together for superior insurance.
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Operations software
It will help farmers to make better and operation decisions, save money, track resources or productivity.
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Skills-building tools
In Indian farming, there is a need for skill building. Farmers produce which they learnt from their parents or ancestors. They don’t know how to use these newly introduced technologies. For that skill building tools should be introduced in the market for the farmers And Introduce them With latest farming techniques.
It includes hotline voice services, videos, mobile apps and others. These tools help farmers to share experiences and learn new and innovative things. In France, AgriFind is a social networking place to ask questions and advice for the farmers.
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Resources
There is a need to utilize resources fully. New irrigation systems in India provide highly targeted fertilizer and water. It is best for urban and vertical farms. In these methods, there used less use of water and soil. That reduces pesticides too.
Smart Farming Ideas
Smart farming connected with innovation. Indian agriculture is facing huge challenges these days. There is an urgent need to accelerate agriculture by smart farming ideas. Around the last 10 years, huge growth noticed in agriculture technology investment. In the last 5 years, investment was $6.7 billion, and in the last year alone, it was $1.9 billion. These investments take place to enhance farming methods in India. We are presenting some smart farming ideas that will guide you ‘How to become a smart farmer’. Have a look.
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Indoor Vertical Farming
Indoor vertical farming is the procedure of growing plants in closed and controlled environments. With this method, plants mounted vertically, and it takes less land space to grow compared to traditional farming. Vertical farms don’t require soil for plants to grow, and in this method, the labour force reduced too. It is the best and the first smart farming technique in India.
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Farm Automation
Farm automation is the up gradation in farming machines and equipment. To accomplish this, companies are working on this. They are working on autonomous tractors, automatic watering, develop drones, robotics innovation, and seeding robots. The companies not only provide quality innovative machinery but make these machines affordable for the farmers.
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Livestock Farming Technology
Livestock provides much needed products, and in our country, livestock is the most ignorant part of farming. New innovations over the 8 to 10 years created huge changes and improvements to the industry. It helps in managing and tracking livestock easily and comfortably. These technologies come in genetics, nutritional technologies, digital technology, and more.
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Modern Greenhouses
Indian agriculture witnessed an increase in the greenhouse in large scale. It is urban centred and capital infused. As the market demand increases dramatically, the trend of the greenhouse is increasing in recent years. A modern greenhouse is now becoming automated control systems, tech-heavy and using LED lights for growing environment.
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Precision Agriculture
Recent precision agriculture companies are introducing technologies that permit Indian farmers to boost production. It is done by controlling pest stress, micro-climates, moisture levels, and soil conditions. In precision agriculture, farmers get appropriate techniques for growing crops and planting that enhance efficiency and income.
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Blockchain
Blockchain used to resolve important issues, including food traceability, supply chain inefficiency, safety recalls, and food fraud in the food system. It creates a market for premium products with verification and transparency. This verifies transactions that are securely shared with every seller or not. It helps in creating transparency in the marketplace and food supply.
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Artificial Intelligence
With the increase in digital agriculture and technologies, opportunities for the farmers increased too. Farmers can gather 24 hours of information by UAVs, satellites, and remote sensors. All these technologies can monitor the health of plants, temperature, soil condition, humidity, etc. Now farmers can get a better understanding of the ground of innovative technologies. These can help them to improve productivity.
Benefits of Smart Farming in India
These techniques of smart farming come with enormous benefits and can help to improve farming productivity. Check out below for benefits of smart farming in India.
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Increase in Efficiency
By smart farming, farmers can increase their efficiency. With advanced technologies farmers, now farmers can produce more products in a limited time period. They get inspected fast, forecast matters before they happen and make important decisions on keeping them away.
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Expansion
With the use of smart farming technologies, expansion in farming takes place. All the agriculture activities take place on time and are of good quality. The short food chain completes on time for these technologies, and everyone in the country gets proper food at an affordable price.
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Proper Use of Resources
By smart farming technologies resources used fully and properly. Resources that include energy, water, and land. By the IoT farming data collected from the sensors which help to allocate an optimum amount of resources to the plants.
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Cleaner process
It is a cleaner process that can save energy, water and make framing greener. These technologies evaluate the use of fertilizer and pesticides. These processes provide organic and cleaner products in comparison to traditional farming methods.
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Agility
Uncertain weather changes, air quality, humidity, soil in the fields, and health of crops monitored by the smart farming technologies. That provides real time monitoring that can predict the condition of the crop. This provides professional advice in extreme weather changes that can save the crops.
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Improved product quality
These help to improve product quality by using crop sensors, farm mapping, and aerial drones. Smart farming technologies create the best conditions to boost the value of nutritional products.
These are all about smart farming in India. I hope you get all the detailed information regarding innovation in farming and advanced technologies that make your farms more productive. For further details, stay tuned with TractorJunction.
