Operationalization of Precision Farming in India

Precision farming has been the buzzword of agricultural research around the globe in recent times. It is based on the philosophy of heterogeneity within homogeneity and requires precise information on the degree of variability for within field management. The aim is to vary the agricultural inputs in response to the varying conditions within the field. The various attempts that have been made to operationalize precision farming in the West involve the use of intelligent devices like the yield mapper (comprising of a harvester, yield measuring sensor and a GPS), variable rate fertilizer rigs and the satellite imagery to supplement the information on the crop variability at a good spatial resolution as well as temporal resolution. Geographic Information System (GIS) integrates the information from all these devices, which culminates into Precision Farming. This mapping and agricultural machinery are together called the agricultural positioning system. In India also, there has been a lot of discussion about the adoption of this novel technology. Precision farming also features as one of the main research agenda in the tenth five-year plan. But the question which needs to be answered is the feasibility of such a technology in a developing country like India where the average size of operational land holding is only 1.57 hectares and nearly 30 percent of the population lives below th