AgTech Innovation News

In a two-day conference, the Department of Biotechnology mooted a plan to create an open source data platform for "smart agriculture".

It has been envisaged that to the needs of farmers by providing market intelligence, weather predictions, and information on soil, water and seed requirements the data platform 'FarmerZone' will help cater.

Under the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), convened the Smart Agriculture Conclave here in partnership with the UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Research Councils UK (RCUK), India.

To set the stage for 'FarmerZone' -- a collective open-source data platform for smart agriculture that will use biological research and data that can be beneficial for small and marginal farmers was the the objective of this conclave.

To help link with farmers and evolve PPP based enterprises for data delivery, the platform will work on getting relevant quality data related to agriculture into the cloud, develop sentinel sites.

To bring about technology-based localised agri-solutions, this platform will connect farmers and scientists, government officials, leaders in agriculture, economists and representatives from global companies who work in the big-data and e-commerce space.

The conclave also identified the challenges faced in each agro-climatic region, and discussed possible solutions through scientific interventions.

For helping small and marginal land-holding farmers, who constitute a major component of Indian agriculture with the agricultural conclave, DBT aims to advance the process of technological intervention.

Source: http://www.business-standard.com/