Towards Progressive Farming

By 2050, world is expecting to have around 10 Billion people, and India as the fastest developing country is likely to have a population of 1.9Billionpeopleormore.Inordertocatersuchapopulation, it’s highly important to put our acts together and focus on enhancing our Agricultural crop quality and yield through innovative agricultural technologies, process optimization and proven package of practices.

While I’m happy to see there are few Governmental bodies, NGO’s and Private institutions stepping up to provide some state of the art technologies to Farmers, the reach and ability to spread the awareness of these technologies are limited to only some confined villages across India, could be due to accessibility issues and man power to engage with over 6,40,867villages.

One of such Agricultural technologies which are available and needs to be commonly introduced are:

• Climate Resilient Practices One of the most proven and effective agricultural practices implemented in countries such as Turkey and Cambodia, is now being implemented in few village pockets of India. While this practice allows a Farmer to adopt early sowing of his crop, its also equally important to consider other influences such as nutritional value and extreme climatic zones.

Indian Agriculture is highly vulnerable to:

• Revenue loss on GrownProduce

• VariedMonsoon

• Extreme Heat waves

While in our generation, we are dependent on satellite or radar information to provide weather reports through smart mobile applications, which could help a farmer to decide when to start sowing and other agriculture activities, it is also interested to note that earlier generations considered stars/constellations to indicate their agriculture activities. For Ex: Orion Constellation used to represent Ploughing Season during the months of October and March, since Orion stars illustrated a Plough symbol as well.

However, since Farmers have now access to Smart Phones at affordable costs, they can subscribe to weather alerts and notifications which will help them to be prepared for agricultural activities.

One of the most beneficial Agriscaping framework is setting up POLYHOUSES for agriculture practices. This infrastructure provides the flexibility of growing cross-seasons cultivation since crops can be grown in a controlled and monitored environment, for ex: Farmer can grow winter crops during Summer season, and Summer Crops during Winter season. Other advantages include, reduction of water and fertilizers, increased yield compared to Open Farming, and reduction of crops being externally influenced from Pest & Insects.

Yet another important Agriculture parameter which is neglected or ignored by many farmers is usage of Bio Organic Manures composted with Coco Peats. This composition of manures help to retain good amount of moisture absorbed from air and has an extensive water holding capacity as well. Thus regulating soil health and not being impacted due to high intensity of heat waves. There are several other benefits of using Organic Manures such as increasing organic carbon in the soil, encourages beneficial soil organisms, suppression of weeds, etc. but it adds a major advantage as one of climate resilient practices in maintaining soil structure and retaining water in the soil.

Conventional Farmers are now gradually converting to be Progressive Farmers by leveraging smart mobile applications, setting up Polyhouses and using soil adaptive Agricultural inputs to ensure crops are grown throughout the year. It’s surprising that as per recent survey results shared by Israel Agriculture Forum, more than 90% Farmers are yet to be positively influenced by Climate Resilient Practices.