Boosting agriculture | Experts discuss how tech advancement can help

Unseasonal rains, hail and wind storms have damaged crop production in India in march. India Meteorological Department (IMD) has advised farmers in Jharkhand, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab among other states to postpone harvesting, as even February was not kind to India's agri space due to the heat wave. It was the hottest February in 122 years in India.

But climate change is not the only factor affecting India’s crop production. In a rally in Gujarat, Home Minister Amit Shah said that agriculture is low due to lack of irrigation and good-quality seeds. This is where agritech can play a major role, but the key question is whether tech advancement can be cost-effective, mass-produced and sustainable.

Karthik Jayaraman, MD of Waycool Foods, said, “It is time we started preparing for climate adaptation rather than just mitigation. For example, there's a crying need to introduce resilient seeds, and we have started work on that. We went to do seed tubers today that give an 80 percent yield despite very very uneven rainfall, compared to yields that can drop as high as 20 percent. So seed technology is necessary and some of us as agri tech players have started focus.”