Agri Ministry to come out with SOPs for use of drones

The Agriculture Ministry designs to come out with conventional working protocols (SOPs) for the use of drones to spray pesticides and nutrients, a senior official reported on Friday.

“Very soon, we will be coming out with SOPs for use of drones for spraying pesticides and nutrients, so that they can be applied for wider apps by farmers and other stakeholders,” reported Shomita Biswas, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture.

Biswas was addressing a conference on Digital and Precision Agriculture, organised by the CII Southern Region on Friday. The Union govt has not too long ago notified Drone principles, 2021. “The drone technology is a essential area and we also want this to be applied in agriculture,” Biswas reported.

Drones are becoming applied for spraying nutrients and pesticides, but with out the part of artificial intelligence and data analytics. The industry ought to operate toward generating this precision agriculture-relevant, whilst getting care of elements these as security, protection and efficacy, she reported.

As the preliminary price of utilizing these technology is very high, Biswas recommended that the industry operate out some plan or small business product so that it can be applied in the fields. Even though leveraging the farmer producer organisations (FPOs) for use of the technology, the industry ought to glance at a general public private partnership and focus on talent developing to make the technology operate for farmers, she reported.

Getting PPP route

Biswas also known as upon the industry to indigenously build factors to minimize the dependency on imports.

Even though stating that mechanisation and precision agriculture has immediate impression on efficiency, aside from reducing drudgery, Biswas reported India needs bigger software of precision farming technologies which are economically viable. These kinds of technologies are also important to attract rural youth to agriculture and make it extra sustainable.

Farmers have been utilizing equipments these as laser levellers, pneumatic seed drills and drip irrigation amid other people, but there is a need for innovators and commence-ups to build technologies that are scalable and effortless to use, she reported.

C Anandharamakrishnan, Director, NIFTEM, Thanjavur, pressured the need to minimise the wastage in meals output, a major problem, utilizing precision technologies. Anil Kumar Venkat Epur, Chairman, CII, Southern Region Agri, Food items processing, Animal Agriculture Sub Committee, recommended the need for a powerful general public private partnerships to take the technology positive aspects to the farmers.

S Chandramohan, Co-Chairman, CII SR Agri, Food items Processing, Animal Agriculture Sub-committee Director, reported the uptake of digital technologies in agriculture is slow mainly thanks to the segregated smallholder farms in the region, which makes data gathering a complex exercise. Limited percolation of mechanisation tools and recurring organic phenomenon like floods and droughts have also worked from the deployment of digital methods in the sector.

Additionally, data of distinct places, markets, soil variety and weather amid other people is essential to make a viable highly developed digital technology, Chandramohan, also Team President (Finance & Investment decision) TAFE Ltd, reported.