Agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy. The government has acknowledged the importance and potential of technology in the agriculture sector. It is promising to note that the budget prioritised agritech, especially with the push on DeepTech like artificial intelligence and geospatial systems and focus on drone shakti. Experts and leaders of the agriculture sector feel that the budgetary provisions and proposals will go a long way towards making the farming industry sustainable and profitable.
Ajay Kakra, Leader, Food and Agriculture, PwC India said, “The focus on startups and agritech in the budget will be helpful for the development of a digital ecosystem and technology inclusion in the agri sector. However, most industry aspirations remain unmet.”
“A more positive aspect was monitoring agriculture with ‘Kisan Drones’ as well as digitising land records. They will be the biggest leap towards the adoption of technology, bringing change at a national level,” Navneet Ravikar, Chairman & Managing Director, Leads Connect Services.
“Keeping up with the times, the government’s support for drone use in agriculture and stressing the role of startups in facilitating ‘drone shakti’ is a great leap forward for driving precision farming at scale,” added Ravikar.
The sector also expects that the effort to increase the production of oilseeds will provide states like UP with high impetus, which, in turn, will help increase farmers’ income. This, along with the announcement of a public-private partnership (PPP) to deliver emerging digital services to farmers, will truly bring a ground-level change to agriculture, not only modernising it but creating plenty of employment opportunities.
The proposed PPP (public-private partnership) mode scheme to promote the delivery of digital and hi-tech services in the agriculture sector will lead to greater cooperation between the private agritech players and public research institutions.
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Taranjeet Singh Bhamra, CEO & Founder, AgNext Technologies said, “For agritech sectors, this is a favourable budget that will pave the way for the robust growth of the agritech players, especially the startups, to scale domestically and internationally. The emerging agritech startups will enjoy the dual benefits afforded to the sunrise agritech sector and startup ecosystem in the budget of 2022.”
The emphasis on digital infrastructure for infusion of agriculture technologies in a PPP mode will be the need of the hour in the next 25 years to combat the serious threat of climate change. “The emphasis on the use of Kisan Drones for crop assessments, land records, spraying of insecticides and micronutrients will be a game-changer for the agriculture sector,” added Dr KC Ravi, Chief Sustainability Officer, Syngenta India.
Experts and leaders also observed that the Budget has a good balance of the short term and long term measures. Amit Sinha, Co-Founder, Unnati said, “Budget has a strong focus on agriculture with a specific focus on the delivery of high tech services, funding of startups through NABARD, focus on “Drone Shakti” for farmers, climate action. There is a good balance of the short term and long term measures. It’s very forward-looking with a long-reaching impact on how agriculture will grow in India. These initiatives will solve the core problem of improvement of farm productivity and help improve farm incomes significantly.”
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The expectations of the agritech industry were exorbitant from this year’s Union Budget and the Government has presented some great initiatives, which is in alignment with the expectations. Dhiresh Kumar, Co-founder & CEO, Neem Tree Agro Solutions pointed out, “The promise to finance startups in agriculture and rural enterprises for farm produce value chain in accordance with NABARD is praiseworthy. The use of Kisan Drones for crop assessments, land records and spraying of insecticides is very convenient. We firmly believe that this year is going to be the year of agtech start-ups, the year is also important as this is the target year for doubling the farmers’ income.”
Echoing similar views and sentiments, Subhashis Banerjee, CIO, ARTPARK (AI & Robotics Technology Park) said, “Using drones for crop assessment, digitisation of land records, as well as spraying of insecticides and nutrients, is a great initiative taken by the Indian government. The agriculture sector will be transformed with the use of drones as well as other futuristic technologies. Govt should take steps to enhance this technology and map the efficacy of such measures so that there is quantifiable data for future decision making.”
Experts and leaders of the agriculture and technology sectors have shown their confidence in ‘Drone Shakti.’ Hopefully, the sector would leverage the benefits of new technologies to create a win-win situation for all stakeholders including farmers and innovators.
