Agriculture and Emerging Technologies – The Two Diversities: Devpal

Agriculture as a subject and Agriculture Ministry is quite diverse in terms of its coverage & composition. The stakeholders under ‘Agriculture’ are too many and too diverse in nature. Agriculture is a subject, everyone in the Country is directly and/or indirectly connected and relates to. Agriculture & allied sectors (Agriculture) contributing around 15% to GDP, and around 50% population dependent upon Agriculture. The Agriculture contribution to GDP has been going south over years. This is quite a serious concern; however, it calls for disruptive transformation on yesterday basis with most urgency to keep Agriculture relevant.

It is not a matter of choice; it is compelling and a compulsion. I would like to make a bold statement, can we achieve with ‘Agriculture’, what India has done to IT and IT&S!!!

Agriculture has a huge potential to achieve higher yield, if concentrated, holistic, and comprehensive efforts be made with optimal technology interventions. To a large extend in India, it is also a matter of scale; hence, role of technology interventions with consolidated focus can make the BIG difference.

I would like to make another bold statement, ‘Urbanisation of Rural’. It is not about commercial malls, multiplex cinemas, multistory luxury apartments, … It is about take demand side to supply end, create employment opportunities, and enhanced inclusiveness.

ICT (Information Technology, Communication, and Telecom) certainly offers natural benefits of technology adoption like efficiency, optional resource utilisation, propensity to reforms, transparency, … The Emerging Technologies (ET) can provide impetus in disruptive manner and achieve transformational transformation. Some of the ETs have the tremendous power & potential to

  1. Conceive new business and portfolio in terms of products, services, and solutions
  2. Conceive new business model, Go-To-Market, Delivery, Service & Support, …
  3. New dataset and information
  4. Connect the unconnected dots in terms of people, data points, related & unrelated, …
  5. Disruptive transformational thinking and new ways of doing everything is the differentiator of ET

Emerging Technologies-led solutions and propositions are more Value-led, very different outcome and end-results can be achieved. ET-led solutions are created once, and different stakeholders can just keep leveraging over time for different purposes.