The Union Budget 2019-20 recognises agriculture as the primary focus sector for the fiscal year. To help marginal and small farmers earn a constant income, the government has decided to invest in large quantum in agricultural infrastructure. The NITI Aayog has been tasked with the responsibility of taking this forward.
The NITI Aayog is asked to come up with suitable programmes and conduct researches on artificial intelligence and machine learning to speed up the economic development in the country. CCMobile, Uzhavan, and IFFCO Kisan are a few of the mobile applications developed for farmers.
The FY19 budget has focused on establishing twenty incubators to train a minimum of 75,000 skilled entrepreneurs in the agro-rural sector. Also, a whopping Rs 805 crore is allocated towards the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMSSY) to address grey areas in the farming sector.
The PMSSY scheme is expected to help to accomplish long-term sustainable goals concerning agriculture. One of the researches conducted by China in 2013 showed that integration of agriculture with the internet of things and cloud computing helped artificial photosynthesis, soilless culture, intelligent irrigation technology, and so on.
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After researching for several years, the Chinese Ministry of information and industry has seen great success in various agricultural projects. Since there was more focus on hardware than software, hence, farmers found accessing the right communication a challenge. This paved the way for the integration of IoT with radiofrequency technology.
The farming sector has envisioned the combination of farming practices and IoT in conceptualising and developing plant laboratory technology. Apart from that, information from the global positioning system (GPS) and wireless sensor nodes (WSN) helped in monitoring.
The information stored in the sensors and farming facilities was frequently shared with the farmers through GPRS. A major benefit of this was that the farmers were able to monitor and manage sensors remotely. It included turning a water pump on or off when the water level touched a particular level.
Realising the impact that communication and the internet of things can have on agricultural practices, the Indian Government has taken upgrading the farming practises seriously. The recently established agricultural organisations are there to bring the Central and State Governments together to work in unison to help farmers get fair deals on their produces and ease the process of doing business.
The National Mission on Agricultural Extension and Technology (NMAET) has a crucial role to play in sustainable development, strengthening and restructuring the way Indian marginal and small farmers go about their agricultural activities.
For any clarifications/feedback on the topic, please contact the writer at vineeth.nc@cleartax.in
Engineer by qualification, financial writer by choice. I am always open to learning new things.
