What the article is about:
- The article talks about the need to increase the food production by the help of Precision farming to feed the population of country.
Relevance:
- Paper 1: Essay
- GS1: Population and associated issues.
- GS2: Government policies and intervention for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
- GS3: Agricultural resources, Awareness in the field of Biotechnology.
Analysis:
- Land degradation, especially the top soil that is crucial for providing us with food, animal feed and fibre & Rapid depletion of Groundwater raises some concerns about feeding ourselves in a sustainable manner.
Imbalance between people, our planet and the political economy of policies:
- Since the evolution of Homo sapiens, which took roughly 2,00,000 years, Human population has touched 8 Billion in 2022.
- This explosive growth of humans has created a huge imbalance between the demands of people and the capacity of this planet to supply them in sustainable manners.
Government’s efforts:
- Many organisations believe that there is no option but to go back to nature and practice organic/ natural farming.
- Organic farming:
- Organic farming also known as ecological farming or biological farming, is an agricultural system that uses fertilizers of organic origin such as compost manure, green manure, and bone meal and places emphasis on techniques such as crop rotation and companion planting.
- However, most of the studies conducted by ICAR in India shows that with the adoption of natural farming yields go down for major staple crops like wheat and rice by as much as 30-50%.
Policy decisions that India needs to take:
- The answer lies in promoting precision farming, It is science of precision farming that can give us “more from less”
- Precision farming:
- Precision agriculture (PA) is an approach to farm management that uses information technology (IT) to ensure that crops and soil receive exactly what they need for optimum health and productivity.
- The goal of PA is to ensure profitability, sustainability and protection of the environment.
Way ahead:
- There is need of innovation in GIS (geographical Information System), AIML (Artificial Intelligence and machine learning) , along with it use of sensors, drones, doves and LEO(low earth orbits), space technologies, cloud computing needs to be integrated with natural farming to get better yields.
- The subsidy policies on Urea, water and power also needs to be reviewed .
