Odisha govt to adopt new age technologies to improve farming quality

With imprints of technology increasing in agriculture sector, Odisha government is set to adopt new ways to increase the quality of farming and farming products. 

In the draft Agricultural Policy of Odisha 2019, the state government aims to promote the  use of IoT (internet of things) sensors to keep the real-time check on the supply and consumption of inputs like seeds, fertilizers and pesticides etc. Similarly, it will initiate measures for setting up technology system for automated grading and sorting of crops using robotics and machine vision.  It  will reduce efforts and wastage in the supply chain.

In addition, the new age technologies like blockchain would be used to support the implementation of contract farming.

The state government will also  strengthen the use of drones for remote monitoring, procurement of high-resolution satellite imagery, weather analysis from IMD ( Indian Meteorological Department) as well through private partnerships. "The analysis of the data from various sources will be used in activities like creating agro-advisory, monitoring the situation in the remote areas, crop cutting experiment etc. The data would also be used to help the farmers avail crop insurance and credit that are rightly priced", the draft policy read.

Among others, a decision support system would be developed under the ADAPT (Analytics for Decision-making and Agricultural Policy Transformation) program which will be an integrated platform for all the relevant datasets in the agriculture department for the purpose of effective management of the activities carried out by the department. "The platform will also enable the usage of the data by the officials of the government at the state, district, block, gram panchayat (GP) and village level. The platform would also be available on mobile for easy access by the officials", the policy said.

The state government will set up a project management unit (PMU) and data science team for managing the technology operations and promote the usage of data. The draft policy which will replace the old policy of 2013 and aims at continuous growth in farmer incomes, making the growth process inclusive of small and marginal farmers  and ensuring sustainable, stable and scalable agricultural growth.

State's first agricultural policy in 1996 and subsequent policies were announced in 2008 and 2013.