Empowering farmers through digital agricultural practices — A review Arulmanikandan1, Mishra Ayush1,*, Shehrawat P.S.2, Malik Joginder Singh3 1Research Scholar, Department of Agricultural Extension Education, CCS HAU, Hisar, Haryana 2Principal Scientist, Department of Agricultural Extension Education, CCS HAU, Hisar, Haryana 3Professor, Department of Agricultural Extension Education, CCS HAU, Hisar, Haryana *Corresponding author email id: ayush96.mishra@gmail.com
Online Published on 18 March, 2024. Abstract The Indian agricultural sector has long struggled with issues relating to input quality and supply, scientific management of farms, post-harvest storage, transport and processing, marketing, environmental degradation, and market and weather-related risks. Further, Climate Change affects the nature of farming operations and their overall outcome by decreasing water supply, degrading arable lands, increasing pest infestation and crop diseases, and diminishing yield quality and quantity. “Digital agriculture” is often seen as having the capacity to alleviate these prolonged issues faced by farmers. It enables the farmer to make better decisions and farmers can receive real-time feedback on the outcomes of their choices. Digital agriculture helps farmers to empower under four categories viz. Agronomical perspective, Technical perspective, Environmental perspective, and Economic perspective. Several technologies like IoT, Smart sensors, UAVs, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Robotics provide highly relevant real-time data, data analytics can help farmers make sense of and make important predictions like harvest time, disease and infection risks, production volume, etc. The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare has also announced the Digital Agriculture Mission 2021—2025 to forward digital agriculture. Several private partnership Agtech startups emerged with innovations that combat the issues of farmers and made an impact on the life of the farmers. Moreover, digital agriculture helps in advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But adoption of digital technology may not be a viable option for small farmers, due to higher investment and lack of operational skills. This calls for awareness and capacity-building programmes on digital agricultural practices to minimize the cost of operation and develop necessary skills among farmers. This study is an effort to define the role of digital agriculture and its significance in the empowerment of farmers. Top Keywords Digital agriculture, Empowerment, Innovations, Smart farming, Startups. Top |