By Ekta Kishore, Viswanath Pingali The recent Economic Survey suggests that more than 54.6% of our workforce depends on agriculture and allied industries as their source of livelihood, contributing a little over 17% to our country’s Gross Value Added. However, degrading soil quality, shifting weather patterns, low mechanisation rates, unavailability of manual labour, sub-optimal irrigation […]
By Ekta Kishore, Viswanath Pingali
The recent Economic Survey suggests that more than 54.6% of our workforce depends on agriculture and allied industries as their source of livelihood, contributing a little over 17% to our country’s Gross Value Added. However, degrading soil quality, shifting weather patterns, low mechanisation rates, unavailability of manual labour, sub-optimal irrigation technologies, low cropping intensity and minimal market linkages constitute some of our farmers’ problems today. It is evident that the sector longs for disruption, but the all-important question is where is it coming from?
To solve any problem, understanding of the problem is crucial! For this, we studied farmers from Central and Eastern Uttar Pradesh and a few Bihar districts, set in the upper and medium Indo-Gangetic plains. Most farmers in these regions are marginal (<1 Ha of farmland) or smallholder (<2Ha) farmers engaged in cereal grain cropping. This study threw up some interesting observations.
Overutilisation of Fertilizers
First, while these plains are high productivity zones, overutilisation of nitrogen and phosphorus-based fertilizers to increase the productivity of certain crops has aggravated the deficiency of other nutrients and micronutrients. Thus, a long period of such unconscious dumping of chemicals has resulted in a negative balance of primary nutrients.
Soil degradation caused by overutilisation has also restricted us from reaping the fruits of biotechnological advancements such as those from modern varieties of high-yielding seeds. If continued, such practices pose a significant threat to the health of topsoil and will create substantial economic and environmental losses for farmers in the long term.
Further, farmers in India face severe weather-related uncertainties and respond through incremental adjustments in sowing dates, cultivation choices, crop rotations, and mixed cropping. However, only a few farmers rationalise to use one or more of these solutions primarily because of the unavailability of timely information and minimal information on the long-term implications of such solutions.
Where to Start
With so many variables, the problem of the agriculture sector thus becomes an interplay of biophysical, biochemical, technological, economic, socio-cultural, political and more importantly, environmental factors.
Rapid urbanisation and a rising middle class are causing a shift in food patterns in India, thereby leading to the growth of the food processing industry. As this industry grows and as the weather pattern shifts become more apparent, we will need to ensure the security of the agricultural supply chains of our country. But the question is, where do we start?
The answer, at least in our opinion, is GO DIGITAL!
In some cases, quite apparently, and in some other cases, quite subtly, data and digital solutions are leading the way to the digital transformation of agriculture and disrupting every part of the agri-food chain. Digital farms are beginning to function as hyper-connected entities, governed and driven by data. Precision farming and smart farming are revolutionising the management of all input resources needed to sustain agriculture.
Thus, the value chains are set to become more traceable and synchronised at the most detailed level. The systems so built will be highly adaptive, productive and predictive to ensure they can suit themselves to any externalities while ensuring food security for the people, profitability for all players of the value chain and sustainability of the environment.
What Can be Done
However, several challenges impede achieving a digitally transformed agricultural landscape. Supportive government policies, ICT in education, affordability and internet penetration are imperative for an Agri-Digital India. With this digital intervention, the structure of the labour market and the nature of work will undergo a systematic change.
This change, however, needs to be supported by digital skill development programmes with help from the government in running talent development, incubator, accelerator programs, and providing grassroots institutional support that will go a long way in driving innovation upwards. Furthermore, a culture of agri-entrepreneurship and innovation committed to transforming existing businesses through novel digital technologies and creating innovative value delivery mechanisms will begin to shape the modern face of the agriculture industry.
Digital technologies and transformations will pave the way to organise a heavily unorganised industry by creating an enabling environment for risk-taking, easy financial access, skill development and trust-based relationships between all stakeholders. Thus, our traditional agricultural value chain will be transformed forever through the data and digital intervention tools such as ICT, mobile technologies and devices, IoT, data analytics, artificial intelligence, digitally delivered services, apps, etc. It will help existing businesses improve, give rise to a newer form of business and open up new markets.
To conclude, given the urgency and availability of technology, it becomes incumbent on farmers, policymakers, agri-businesses to ensure the agricultural ecosystem develops to enhance sustainable practices and limit wastage. Digital transformation has massive potential to address the multidisciplinary challenges in agriculture, encompassing a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.
However, for us to achieve this transformation, a serious change in the mindset is needed. In this context, the only questions to ask are: Is the sector adaptable to change? And if it is adaptable to change, what can the sector do to convince budding entrepreneurs to invest in this? The answers to these will determine what happens to this sector in the coming decades.
(Ekta Kishore is a student at the one year MBA programme at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and a budding agri-entrepreneur. Viswanath Pingali is an Associate Professor in the Economics area at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad)