ICFA Working Group on Precision Agriculture
Agriculture worldwide is passing through challenging times. Expanding population and declining productivity poses immense challenge to the food security of any country. Intensively managed cropping systems in India have over the years recorded stagnant yields with a decreasing response to farm inputs. Rapid increase in population, urbanization and income growth are now exerting extra pressure to further increase production. Hence, countries like India, where agriculture plays a major part in economy, adoption of environment-friendly technologies and holistic approach of farm management is, therefore, essential for agricultural sustainability. Information technologies have paved the way for significant change in crop production management and agricultural decision making. These methods stress on enhancing the input use efficiency.
Precision Farming, offers the promise of increasing productivity while decreasing production costs and minimizing environmental impacts. The high tech tools of precision farming are: an integration of several advanced technologies like geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), remote sensing, crop models, ground-based sensors and the Internet. India like other many countries has also begun to integrate remote sensing and GIS. Precision farming promises to revolutionize farm management as it offers a variety of potential benefits in profitability, productivity, sustainability, crop quality, environmental protection, on-farm quality of life, food safety, and rural economic development. Studies in USA, Canada, Europe and Australia have shown that precision farming permits reductions in farm inputs without sacrificing crop yields. Refinement and wider application of precision farming technologies in India can help in lowering production costs, enhancing higher productivity and better utilization of natural resources. International Conference on Precision Farming organized by ICFA in India becomes the ideal platform for the stakeholders to discuss the issues, growth opportunities and explore possibilities of introducing precision agriculture.
The Conference aims at achieving the following specific objectives: