Hyderabad: Agri and allied industries should work to reduce challenges like low productivity, soil fertility and others faced by farmers, said agriculture minister Tummala Nageswara Rao.
Inaugurating the fourth edition of CII Agri Tech South 2024 and Agri Vision 2024 at the PJTSAU on Friday, he expressed concerns that several farmers are still practising agriculture the old way and were not getting benefitted from the new technologies. He urged the industry to keep pace with global developments and bring the same tech to the local farmers.
He stressed that the progress of the state hinges on the prosperity of farmers, underscoring the need for innovations and technologies to directly benefit them. He flagged the issue of spurious seeds impacting the farmers.
The CII Telangana-Earnest Young (EY) White Oaper on ‘Revolutionising Telangana's Agriculture : A Digital Approach’, was released at the AgriVision conference. It explores how AI, remote sensing, robotics, and various digital tools can reshape agriculture in Telangana state. It focuses on a sustainable, productive, and resilient agricultural environment.
C. Shekar Reddy, CII Telangana chairman, said there was a need for an agri-cluster development approach based on production strengths of various agro-climatic regions and land management units. The government has to implement a comprehensive value chain development strategy for each agri-cluster to attract investments and generate off-farm jobs for rural people.
Development of post-harvest infrastructure and marketing facilities, incentivising non-paddy crops like pulses, oilseeds, maize, and horticultural crops, seed policy for non-paddy crops, assured procurement for pulses and oilseeds and millets under the price support scheme (PSS) will help, he said.
