Smart Farming: Integrating Technology into Traditional Agriculture

Agriculture is one of the most prominent economic sources in developing countries like Nepal, where the largest proportion of the active population is engaged in this field. The agricultural sector in rural Nepal largely follows seasonal cultivation with traditional practices for cultivation, harvesting, and post-harvest management. In such a context, Sustainable Rural Development Goals (SRD) rely on three crucial pillars, namely the satisfaction of social needs, economic efficiency, and optimal management and conservation of natural resources, and the reduction of the burden on the ecosystem. Despite global technological development and adaptation, our rural areas are very far behind the SRD goals and are still struggling to gain economic progress through optimal resource management and conservation for social satisfaction. The present condition offers tremendous potential to integrate smart and high-tech farming techniques like vertical farming, drip irrigation systems, soil sensors, precision drones and GPS technology, hydroponic farming, genetic engineering, dryland farming, agroforestry, and artificial intelligence in agriculture. In this article, we attempt to highlight these technologies and the possibilities to integrate them into our farming system.

Drip irrigation system on farming land provides water to the plant by placing tubing with emitters on the ground alongside the plants. The emitters slowly drip water at an optimal level into the soil at the root zone. Since the moisture level in the soil is constantly monitored, it enhances plant productivity and improves the quality of crops. Vertical farming technique is one of the substantial solutions that could be used in place of soil-based farming systems as a supplementary approach to address the ongoing scarcity of water and fertile agricultural land. It involves growing crops in vertically stacked layers within a controlled environment, such as a building or greenhouse. Sometimes, vertical farming is referred to as hydroponic farming, which is a method of growing plants without soil, using nutrient-rich water solutions instead for plant cultivation and growth. It offers potential benefits like increased land use efficiency, reduced water consumption, and decreased reliance on pesticides.

With the evolution of time, agricultural practices are completely automated with modern solutions like precision farming with the help of drones and GPS technologies. Farmers can easily monitor crops, soil conditions, and livestock remotely and manage resources with greater efficiency and accuracy. Drones equipped with GPS and various sensor mechanisms can help to collect data on crop health, soil variability, and other factors that help to take actions like irrigating and spraying fertilizers, pesticides, and water. Similarly, productivity is one of the major concerns in agriculture to increase crop yield and gain high economic advantages. With advanced genetic engineering, scientists can easily modify the genetic makeup of crops to enhance their desirable traits, which increases the yields, improves nutritional value, and reduces reliance on pesticides and herbicides. This helps to address global food security concerns and contributes to more sustainable farming practices.

Unlike global agricultural practices, the farmers hold small chunks of land privately, where they grow for their own needs and sell the surplus items to the market. Because of this, it is very difficult to integrate high-tech solutions for farmers, since these systems are too expensive to be held privately by individual farmers. Distributing and integrating these technologies through farming cooperatives under subsidy schemes by government entities could be one of the most feasible options to promote smart farming. Through a two-step policy framework: (1) immediate policy goals for promoting farming techniques like vertical farming, hydroponic farming, and drip irrigation in the first step, and (2) long-term policy goals for developing research infrastructure for precision drones and GPS technology, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence in agriculture. With effective policy implementation and coordination between different stakeholders, the government of Nepal can easily achieve SRD goals for the betterment of rural farming communities in Nepal.