Digitalization of Agriculture Sector in India
摘要
Decreasing land size, increasing pollution, deepening water table, freshwater scarcity, land degradation, depleting natural resources, and many other factors have severely affected the global agriculture scenario. In addition, the burgeoning world population has increased the food demand worldwide, which has put food security at risk. In the purview of shrinking land size, the plate of every individual can be made full only if agricultural productivity is increased. Traditional methods of agriculture cannot improve productivity without compromising sustainability and affecting the ecosystem negatively. Therefore, there is a call for adopting smart agriculture or in other words there is a need to digitalize agriculture. Agriculture can be digitalized mainly through four broad approaches, namely, data-driven agriculture, precision agriculture, ICT-enabled extension and digital financial services. The agricultural policies made through digitalization are observed to be very effective in improving agricultural productivity. A major hurdle in the process is the lack of digital infrastructure including internet and mobile facilities, digital devices etc., in rural areas of India where agriculture is the main occupation of most households. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the roadblocks in the digitalization of agriculture so that the execution of smart agriculture is carried out properly.