Precision Farming: Dreams and Realities for Indian Agriculture

Human kind invented agriculture 10,000 years ago. After a long mile, nowhere in the world has agriculture made an impact as it has in India. The economy of the second most populous country in the world is inextricably linked to the pulse of its agricultural success or failure. The green revolution in the late 60’s saw the country through a period of what could otherwise have been the worst famine in the world. Yet after nearly three and half decades into the post green revolution period, the country still faces crisis each year in trying to meet the burgeoning demand for food by its people. As the result of information technology application in agriculture, precision farming is a feasible approach for sustainable agriculture. Precision farming makes use of remote sensing to macro-control of GPS to locate precisely ground position and of GIS to store ground information. It precisely establishes various operations, such as the best tillage, application of fertilizer, sowing, irrigation, harvesting etc., and turns traditional extensive production to intensive production according to space variable data. Precision farming not only may utilize fully resources, reduce investment, decrease pollution of the of the environment and get the most of social and economic efficiency, but also makes farm products, the same as industry, become controllable, and be produced in standards and batches. However, precision farming has been confined to developed countries. Land tenure system, smaller farm size (<1ha) and crop diversity have limited the scope of precision farming in India. However, there is a wide scope for precision farming in irrigated/commercial/fruit and vegetable crops/high value crops. It is apparent that there is a tremendous scope for precision farming in India as well and it is necessary to develop database of agriculture resources, which will act as decision support system at the farm (<1 ha) level. This will be a stupendous task and a threatening challenge to space and agricultural scientists alike who are currently remotely placed from the ground truth of Indian farming. However, the speeds of these transformations depend very much on the level of commitment of politicians, scientists, bureaucrats and technocrats at whose mercy the farmer really is! The paper highlights the Map India 2004 Proceeding Map India Conference 2004 © GISdevelopment.net, All rights reserved. precision technology transfer in agriculture sector, present status of precision farming in India, obstacle, prospects, scope and strategies for implementation to harvest the fruitful results.