Immediate Need Of Automation In Indian Agricultural Sector

Automation is not a choice any more. It is now essential for survival. And it is true for all sectors of economy, including agriculture. The industrial revolution started with the textile industry in England. The revolution saw a large-scale use of machines and automation in clothes manufacturing. And that slowly but surely spread out in all other sectors. And today, all industries use automation to a very large extent because that is the only way to reduce production cost per unit and maximize profit.

 

Learning the nature’s laws and using the knowledge to produce food for a large population were what set humans apart from the other animals. And humans have been honing that skill since the last ten thousand years or more. With a population of 7.5 billion, the demand from the skill is huge and it is only going to get worse in the coming days. With a projected population of 10 billion by 2050 and the scarcity of fresh water looming large, agriculture is going to see far greater challenges in the immediate future. Producing far greater amount of food using far less amount of resources, e.g. water, fertilizer and pesticides, is going to be the challenge that the farmers are going to face in very near future. And the only way that demand can be met in a sustainable and profitable way is – automation.

 

The whole world is moving in that direction now. Automated machinery is used for all stages of farming today: ploughing, seeding, irrigation, weeding, applying fertilizers and pesticides, harvesting, packaging, storage and transportation. And effective use of data analytics feeding into automation results in lower demand on irrigation, better ratio of micronutrients in soil leading to better yield, controlled use of pesticides leading to healthier crop, quick and timely harvesting of the produce and low wastage of produce. This entire cycle leads to higher amount of food for the population, better and healthier produce for consumers and better profitability for the farmer. It’s a win-win for all stakeholders of the ecosystem.

 

Of course, every kind of machinery has its own pre-requisites for it to be useful and adoption of automation should be a gradual process. Farmers need to educate themselves on the possibilities that the future holds and start working towards adopting automation in a steady manner. There are options, such as geoBHUMI, in the market today that can help them monitor the level of water and advise them on when to irrigate the farm plot or when fertilizers to use. This is the simplest but most critical level of automation that the farmers can and should adopt immediately. 

 

Large farm plots can use automated ploughing, seeding and harvesting robots – however, farm lands are typically split into many small pieces in India with only a few large tracts of land belonging to one farmer producing the same crop. Farmers should also work with owners of cold storage and make sure that the storage units have sensors to keep moisture and temperature at optimum levels to reduce wastage of produce during storage.

 

Automated data collection, analysis and action will go a long way in solving India’s food problem of tomorrow.

 

Subhobrata Biswas - Chief Architect & Fellow, Mobileum (India) Pvt. Ltd

Ex Alumni – IIT Kharagpur 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Micro Climate

Image
                                                        Air Humidity A   micro climate  is set of atmospheric conditions of a specific area that may vary widely from the surrounding geographical area, especially Air Humidity and Air Temperature.            Humidity levels fluctuate with change with weather, air temperature as well as the plants constantly transpiring which add water vapor to the air. Humid directly contributes to problems such as foliar and root diseases, slow drying of growing medium, plant stress and loss of quality of yields.  Together with the air temperature, it also impacts heavily the affect of various pests of a particular crop. Therefore, more pesticides are needed for disease control and plants tend to have weak, stretched growth making the plant less desirable. Plants adjust their leaf stomatal openings on the VPD ( Vapour - pressure-deficit ) and the humidity in air. At high humidity, water usage by plant is too low which compromises quality of the yield.
Read more

Air Humidity & Air Temperature Control Quality & Quantity of Crop Yield

Image
  Humidity is important for photosynthesis of plants and e vaporation regulates the plant temperature through the open stomata. So, it is very important to keep the stomata of the plants open during irradiation for photosynthesis and absorb atmospheric carbon-di-oxide (CO 2 ) for the proper growth of the plants. If stomata are open, photosynthesis is possible at even low sunlight. Reduced evaporation of the plant also helps the plants to keep stomata open.   The stomata get closed incase the plants lose too much of water due to low humidity & high air temperature. Thus, plants stop photosynthesis and no CO 2  can be absorbed as the stomata are closed. T he closed stomata also increase the plant temperature very quickly and damage the plant. This excess heat may destroy the chlorophyll and the leaves turn yellow. If the heat increases further, it may leave behind permanent damages in various parts of the plants.   To keep stomata open, the humidity must be at the right lev
Read more

An industry hungry for change

Image
                                             The threat that the world will struggle to feed itself in 2050 is very real. The UN projects that the world population is likely to reach 9.8 billion, up from 7.8 billion as of 2021. That’s a 26% increase in the span of 20 years. In the same time period, soil fertility is expected to be compromised while the weather is likely to become increasingly unpredictable. This congruence of situations means that the global food supply chain will be put under unprecedented stress due to a fluctuating output. The scenes which may follow, are likely to be right out of a dystopian science fiction novel. Children and adults in developing and underdeveloped nations starving. The developed world, at each other’s throats in order for each nation to secure enough rations to feed their population.   The circumstances are even more dire in India. Whil e other countries may see off this threat by reallocating resources into agriculture, the structural chang
Read more