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Govt to give fillip to agritech startups critical for economic growth
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Thursday, 26 May, 2022, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Nandita Vijay, Bengaluru
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Union government sees the importance of agritech startups as a critical component for India’s economic growth. This along with academic and industry partnerships for commercialisation of food products will add much value to the development of the food processing sector.
Speaking at the TechBharat meet on the theme of Transforming India’s Food Technology and Agronomic Landscape held at the CSIR-Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) in Mysuru, Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Dr Jitendra Singh said agritech startups are critical to India’s future economy. The country already has 70,000 startups and all this has come up following a supportive policy by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address the problems impacting the agriculture sector.
Noting that Indian agriculture needs to implement technology which could bring in accuracy speed and efficiency, he said that Kisan Drones are being propagated for crop assessment, digitisation of land records, spraying of insecticides, and nutrients in the country.
We need to see sustainability of the startup business to connect with livelihood to be successful. There are already startups offering solutions such as biogas plants, solar-powered cold storage, fencing, water pumping, weather prediction, spraying machines, seed drills, and vertical farming which are seen to improve the farmer’s income generation.
Stating that it was gratifying to see the young talent utilising technology like artificial intelligence (AI) for operating agri devices, he said that novel concepts were brimming in the country. Moreover, there were several young entrepreneurs moving out of careers in information technology and opting for agriculture and making it profitable ventures with use of technology.
India needs to emulate models of technology adoption in agriculture like that of countries like Israel, China, and the US which have transformed several agriculture practices in their countries.
Early this year Modi launched 100 made in India agricultural drones across the country which carried out farm operations in simultaneous flights.
Similarly technology adoption could offset the challenges of storage and transportation in the country. Here industry needed to partner with government with 50:50 stake of offering their support to help farmers ensure accurate yield of crops backed by scientific know-how.
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