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CAUSES

Agriculture for New-Age India

The major problem faced by the farming youth in India has been found to be ‘lack of training programme’ and ‘lack of timely guidance’. With agriculture being the primary source of livelihood for about 58% of India’s population, Indian Youth have to be made part of an agriculture revolution.

The real story of Indian development is intertwined strongly with the development achieved in the Rural India, where most of India resides. With agriculture being the primary source of livelihood for about 58% of India's population, Indian Youth need to bring about a paradigm shift in agriculture.

Currently, we do not have adequate integrated pack houses, refer trucks, bulk and distribution centers and ripening chambers. Therefore, farmers are not able to sell their products in distant markets. Due to this lack of infrastructure, we lose close to ₹13 billion in the post-harvest phase.

Initiatives to create distribution hubs, dedicated rail connectivity, pack houses and market access needs to be undertaken for resolving this issue. Further, we need to invest in mainstreaming alternate technologies such as passive cooling for reducing wastage and minimising transit losses.

Passive cooling is better than the conventional active cooling as it reduces fuel consumption, has a low carbon footprint and lower operational cost.

The time has come for Indian farmers to adopt new-age innovative solutions to age-old problems. The convergence of mobile networks, broadband internet, cloud platforms, IoT, AI and open data has the potential to transform agriculture in India.

New age farming practices has to be at the center of all agricultural reforms. In most of the cases, farmers do not get beyond 20-30 % share in the profits, due to commoditised approach to farm produce.

The global organic production market is currently valued at $82 billion. However the Indian market is quiet nascent amounting to only 0.66 billion.

There is a huge opportunity for India in organic farming and other new-age agricultural streams Innovation is the key to give the farming sector a new lease of life. The focus should also be on promoting entrepreneurship, developing and incubating startups, look at new business models to bring about a transformation in the sector.