THE NEED FOR PRECISION FARMING IN INDIA

The ‘Green revolution’ of 1960’s has made our country self sufficient in food production. In 1947, the country produced a little over six million tonnes of wheat, in 1999; our farmers harvested over 72 million tonnes, taking the country to the second position in wheat production in the world. The production of food grains in five decades, has increased more than three fold, the yield during this period has increased more than two folds. All this has been possible due to high input application, like increase in fertilization, irrigation, pesticides, higher use of HYV’s, increase in cropping intensity and increase in mechanization of agriculture.

i) Fatigue of Green Revolution

Green revolution of course contributed a lot. However, even with the spectacular growth in the agriculture, the productivity levels of many major crops are far below than expectation. We have not achieved even the lowest level of potential productivity of Indian high yielding varieties, whereas the worlds highest productive country have crop yield levels significantly higher than the upper limit of the potential of Indian HYV’s. Even the crop yields of India’s agriculturally rich state like Punjab is far below than the average yield of many high productive countries (Ray et al., 2001).

ii) Natural Resource Degradation

The green revolution is also associated with negative ecological/environmental consequences. The status of Indian environment shows that, in India, about 182 million ha of the country’s total geographical area of 328.7 million ha is affected by land degradation of this 141.33 million ha are due to water erosion, 11.50 million ha due to wind erosion and 12.63 and 13.24 million ha are due to water logging and chemical deterioration (salinisation and loss of nutrients) respectively. On the other end, India shares 17 per cent of world’s population, 1 per cent of gross world product, 4 per cent of world carbon emission, 3.6 per cent of CO2 emission intensity and 2 per cent of world forest area. One of the major reasons for this status of environment is the population growth of 2.2 per cent in 1970 – 2000. The Indian status on environment is, though not alarming when compared to developed countries, gives an early warning.

 

In this context, there is a need to convert this green revolution into an evergreen revolution, which will be triggered by farming systems approach that can help to produce more from the available land, water and labour resources, without either ecological or social harm (Swaminathan, 2002). Since precision farming, proposes to prescribe tailor made management practices, it can help to serve this purpose.