D.5. Way forward for Digital Agriculture in India
- As the Indian Agriculture and Allied sector is on the verge of adopting modern technologies, such as IoT, AI/ML and agri-drones for unmanned aerial surveying, Indian and foreign agritech players can play a vital role in supplying these advanced technologies to farmers.
- Currently, there are few players in the market, but catering to ~267 million farmers in a country exhibits a huge opportunity for private and foreign entities to expand their footprint in the country.
- However, influential factors that will define the success of digital agriculture in India are technology affordability, ease of access and operations, easy maintenance of systems and supportive government policies.
- Adopting a holistic ecosystem approach to address challenges faced by the Indian agriculture sectoris of national interest, to achieve objectives, like doubling farmer incomes and sustainable development.
- Thus, a multi-stakeholder approach will be required for the wide-scale adoption of digital agriculture in India, with the government playing a key enabler’s role in the ecosystem