Pune, June 3 (IANS) Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday made a strong case for the use of advanced technology amid the increasing cost of agricultural production and the lack of availability of adequate manpower.

In the backdrop of the changing environment, when the agriculture sector is facing many problems, the use of modern technology is the only solution to help the farmers. It is necessary to incubate useful technologies in the Pune Agri Hackathon and take this technology to the farmers, asserted the Chief Minister.

He was speaking at the prize distribution and closing ceremony of the first ‘ Pune Agri Hackathon,’ in the presence of Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.

“The technologies presented in the hackathon are very useful for farmers. Excellent technologies in irrigation, crop harvesting, crop spraying technology, AI control rovers, use of machine learning in pest management, dryers that increase shelf life, technology for protection of agricultural products from animals and the post-harvest processing technology have been presented here,” he said.

The Chief Minister said that to reach these solutions for the farmers, it is necessary to convert them into good products and take them to the market.

“For this, the Agriculture Department should take the initiative and set up incubation centres in agricultural colleges and develop these technologies into commercial products and benefit the farmers,” he appealed.

Suggesting that the Agriculture Department should organise such hackathons in various parts of the state, he said that a maximum of 30 to 32 per cent of startups in the country are related to the agriculture sector, and most of them are from Maharashtra.

“There is a need for an initiative like Agri Hackathon to encourage various agriculture-based startups. If this revolution in the field of agricultural technology is taken forward in this way, the problems in the agricultural sector can be solved and agricultural productivity can be increased, thereby benefiting the farmers,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that the farmers here have made progress in this field with their hard work and innovative ideas.

“The ‘Clean Plant’ program will be implemented in the country to ensure that the plants obtained from nurseries for horticulture are disease-free and beneficial to the farmers,” he said.

The Union Minister also announced that nine centres will be set up in the country, and three of them will be set up in Maharashtra.

A centre for grapes will be started in Pune, for oranges in Nagpur and for pomegranates in Solapur. A total of Rs 300 crore will be spent on this.

“Under this program, modern nurseries will be set up, and these nurseries will be given to farmers using technology to run them. Rs 3 crore will be given for a large nursery and Rs 1.5 crore for a medium-sized nursery. This will provide 8 crore disease-free seedlings to farmers every year,” he stated.

Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said that technology that gives high production at low cost and in time will have to be brought to the farmers’ doorstep.

–IANS

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