BENGALURU: The Centre’s announcement to provide subsidies in purchasing drones, by revised guidelines, has generated interest among farmers and their organisations to buy and use drones for agricultural and allied activities.
Agriculture Minister B C Patil told TNIE, “Karnataka has about 12.3 million hectares under agriculture and this (drone) will help the farmers a lot in alleviating labour problems. I will speak to the harvest centres to help the farmers use drones.”
Karnataka’s former agriculture additional secretary Dr GK Vasanth Kumar told TNIE, “Indian agricultural productivity as compared to the productivity of farmers in some advanced nations like Israel has been rather poor, and scientific inputs have been blamed for it. Putting drones in the hands of farmers is like giving them the best and latest technology.
It is good and necessary for agriculture in mapping, doing detailed surveys, soil mapping, disease identification, stress of plant, control of water and studying physiology of plant, and identifying sensors of plant, use of nanotechnology, among others.”Israel has been one of the key nations that has benefitted from the use of drones.
Israeli Consul Jonathan Zadka said, “The new subsidy plan for drones in agriculture is very important for promoting the use of such technology. This is probably one of the most relevant sectors for collaboration between Israel and India in drone technology, supporting precision-based agriculture and the improvement of sustainable agriculture.
Drones offer effective solutions to complicated challenges and allow users to use innovative methods to reduce risk and uncertainty. Israeli companies are natural partners and offer services and solutions. Utilising autonomous drones that can be used, for example, to administer pesticides, deal with specific pests, monitor fields and detect crop disease at an early stage.”
He said, “Israeli technology based on the development of high-resolution, low-distortion multispectral camera solutions for agriculture allows the synchronisation of multi-camera imagery from fast-flying drones with a single camera, providing advanced modelling.”