According to an official statement released on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will speak at a webinar on smart agriculture on Thursday.
Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Piyush Goyal, Fisheries, Animal Husbandry, and Dairy Minister Parshottam Rupala, and Food Processing Minister Pashupati Kumar Paras will all be in attendance.
The webinar will feature Minister of State for Agriculture Kailash Choudhary and Minister of State for Cooperation B L Verma, among others.
The one-day webinar will cover five key topics, including natural farming and developing a digital agro-eco system, as well as approaches to achieving edible oil self-sufficiency.
Smart agriculture decreases farming’s ecological footprint. In precision agricultural systems, minimized or site-specific application of inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides will reduce leaching issues as well as greenhouse gas emissions. With today’s ICT, it is possible to build a sensor network that allows for near-constant monitoring of the farm.
Similarly, theoretical and practical frameworks for connecting the states of plants, animals, and soils with the need for production inputs such as water, fertilizer and pharmaceuticals are in reach with current ICT globally.
Smart farming can increase the farmer’s profitability. Reduced resource inputs save money and effort for farmers, while greater dependability of spatially explicit data reduces risks. Crop cultivation will be optimized using optimum, site-specific weather predictions, yield estimates, and probability maps for diseases and disasters based on a dense network of meteorological and climate data.
Site-specific data also creates new insurance and commercial opportunities for the entire value chain, from technology and input providers to farmers, processors, and retailers in both developing and developed countries. The time required for resource prioritisation and administrative oversight is reduced when all farming-related data is collected by automated sensors.