Smart agriculture is an emerging and becoming a popular strategy to increase agricultural production, minimize post-harvest losses, reduce farm workload and stress, improve participation of women and elderly in the farming system, and make farming more climate and disaster resilient. A combination of modern tools and equipment, including sensing technologies, use of drones, satellite imagery, soil sensors, Internet web-based applications for agriculture, farm automation, and control systems, are being utilized to make farming more efficient and user-friendly. Integrating smart agriculture is essential in the light of high population growth, ageing farmers, high price of fossil fuel, declining arable lands, and transformation to a nutrition-sensitive food system.
Various support services, including science-based R&D, financing, infrastructure, and policy reforms, are needed to realize the goals of smart agriculture. For this reason, there is a need to craft the strategic direction of smart agriculture by formulating a roadmap. To realize the aspiration of the roadmap, projects should be formulated, packaged, and submitted for funding.
This consultation cum training workshop is focused on crafting a strategic roadmap and enhancing the skills of key actors in program or project proposal packaging of smart agriculture programs and projects.