Notes

According to the World Bank around 68% of the population of South Asia lives in the rural areas and agriculture is the main source of income and employment for about 70% of those people. Asia is a fast growing region and a lot of technological advancements can be seen in various industries but agriculture is one such field where the technological advancements have not been able to solve some grave issues which in turn cause low food production. There are hardly any startups who are penetrating the rural areas and are trying to solve problems faced by farmers or are trying to discover newer ways to increase the efficiency and total food production. Degradation of land and water pose serious threats to the production of enough food and agricultural products to promote sustainable development and to meet the demands of urban population. We need to find solutions for sustainable agricultural methods and need to make innovations to make the new technologies available to the farmers who are mostly illiterate. Two generations back my family's occupation was agriculture and it was the only source of income, I have myself witnessed the problems faced by the farmers since our family still holds land in the village and we still practice farming. One of the major problems is the degradation of the quality of soil. Scientists all around the world have found ways to enrich the nutrients of the soil but those ways are still alien to the people who need it most i.e farmers. They do not have access to the resources to learn new smarter sustainable ways of farming and are still dependent on centuries old methods and technologies.

One of the ways to solve this pressing issue is using the mobile technology, mobile apps can be made which will help educate farmers about the latest technologies and newer methods to follow. Me along with a few of my friends in my college are working on a portable soil quality checker which can be attached to a mobile phone and will be able to take soil samples and examine the contents and send the results to the agriculture scientists and custom suggestions and recommendations can then be passed to the farmer which will help in efficient and sustainable farming. Now one of the major problems in this method is that most of the farmers are illiterate and are not capable of operating smart phones a possible solution for this can be use of volunteers, we can teach 2-3 people in every village how to use smart phones and how to operate the device to check the quality of soil and they can then volunteer to help other farmers in the village.