Climate Change Impacts on Agricultural Sector in Sri Lanka: Necessity of Precision Agricultural Technologies

The impacts of climate change and increasing concerns on environmental sustainability have imposed numerous challenges on ensuring the agricultural productivity of Sri Lanka. The recent policy decisions of the country on environmentally friendly agricultural strategies have further influenced this issue. Therefore, maintaining higher productivity with minimum environmental impacts and using optimum inputs (fertilizer, irrigation, labor, and other agro-chemicals) remain a challenge. Adoption of Precision Agricultural Technologies (PAT), which is an emerging discipline that integrates several technologies, such as Automation, Drone Technology (DT), Internet of Things (IoT), Geo-Informatics, Sensor Technology, and Variable-Rate Technology (VRT), remains the most viable solution. Different PAT combinations could effectively support monitoring and respond to variability in soil, environment, and crops, ensuring optimal resource utilization. The combined use of the aforesaid technologies would enable Sri Lankan farmers to detect and monitor soil and crop conditions, enabling customized automation of irrigation, fertilizer application, and pest and disease management. Adequately calibrated crop modeling applications can also support decision-making and operational control in agriculture. Ultimately, accurate and reliable decision support systems could be developed and used for Sri Lankan scenarios by integrating PAT, respecting edaphic, crop, operational, and meteorological parameters relevant to agriculture. However, due to numerous barriers such as a lack of technological expertise and physical resources, poor socio-economic conditions of farmers, gaps in policies and implementation processes, poor coordination among government and other entities, and lack of government support, PAT adoption in Sri Lanka remains relatively low. Therefore, the Sri Lankan government and other key agricultural entities have to take efforts to promote PAT in Sri Lanka, through enhancement of the physical infrastructure facilities, dissemination of knowledge and technology, empowering the farmers and Agricultural Instructors (AI), while elevating the Technology Readiness (TR) of farmers. In addition, drafting and implementation of long-term policies aiming to promote PAT are vital to ensure agricultural productivity in Sri Lanka with minimum environmental impacts.