Karnataka sows seeds for precision agriculture
- The Agricultural Price Commission has roped in computer major IBM to assess real-time situation of cultivated land, crop health and also project potential yield to avoid price crash with the help of precision farming.
- Commission Chairman Prakash Kammardi said an agreement was signed with The Weather Company, owned by IBM, for a pilot project in four districts. The project involves employing satellite imagery, artificial intelligence and machine learning to scan the land for cultivation patterns.
- The commission has already developed a digital dashboard which displays arrival and sale of products to the agricultural produce market committee everyday.
- Prices crash is one of the major reason driving farmers to suicide. Farmers express their anger by dumping the produce on roads instead of selling them at dirt-cheap rates. The commission believes that this knowledge will help in providing useful information to farmers as well as the government.
- The company has chosen maize and tomato as it has validated models of assessment tools in the pilot project.
