Precision Farming Technologies for Sustainable Agriculture in India - Current status and Prospects

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1 International Journal of Ecology and Environmental Sciences 30(3): , 2004 INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS, NEW DELHI Precision Farming Technologies for Sustainable Agriculture in India - Current status and Prospects N.R. PATEL*, L.M. PANDE AND P.S. ROY Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), Dehradun , Uttaranchal, India * Corresponding author; nrpatel@iirs.gov.in ABSTRACT In the new millennium, explosive growth of population and signs of declining productivity puts great challenge against Indian agricultural sector to achieve food and environmental security. To meet this challenge, modern frontier technologies involving systems approach towards efficient crop and input management, and scientific land and water use planning, is an urgent need of our country. Precision farming technologies perhaps the best option which can improve carrying capacity of land on a sustainable basis. Precision farming technologies is a suite of advanced technological innovation like Global Positioning System (GPS), Geographical Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing, Variable Rate Technology (VRT), crop growth models, ground based sensors and the Internet. Despite several obstacles, there are ample scope to adopt a part of precision farming technologies in Indian agriculture through collaborative efforts by space technology organizations, agricultural institutions, private sector and NGOs. This paper present technological components, current status in relevance to existing traditional technologies and prospects of implementing precision farming technologies in Indian agriculture on a limited scale. Key Words: GIS, Precision farming, Remote sensing, Sustainable agriculture INTRODUCTION Agricultural sustainability in India can be achieved only if the natural resource base upon which it relies is well managed. However, in attempt to achieve high productivity over past 3-4 decades, a critical linkage between agriculture and the environment fragility has been ignored resulting in agro-ecosystems with little resilience. Yield increases in India have been achieved at considerable expense to its resource base and largely by means of excessive and indiscriminate use of external inputs: irrigation, seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, etc. High rates of pollution, aquifer depletion, pest and disease incidence, soil degradation, and reduced biodiversity are, therefore, rampant. For instance, mismanagement of land and water resources have resulted in poor agricultural productivity of India varying between a 0.5 Mg (=ton) ha!1 to 2.5 Mg ha!1 as against world average of 2.6 Mg ha!1, and over 4.5 Mg ha!1 in the developed nations (Rao 1995). Land degradation in India due to various degradation forces accounts more than half of total geographical extent. Intensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides combined with poor management of watersheds has resulted in severe water stress, pesticides contamination of water and agricultural products in addition to the unacceptable degradation of soils resulting into disruption of ecosystems over larger areas. The effects of pesticide use on deteriorating farmers health and enhanced pest resistance and resurgence are also well documented. Even intensively managed cropping systems in India seem to be unsustainable as yield levels have become stagnant or declined with a decreasing response to farm inputs and a widening gap between the potential and realized yields. Rapid increase in population pressure, urbanization and income growth are now exerting extra pressure to further increase production. Hence, for developing country like India, adoption of environment-friendly technologies and holistic approach of farm management is, therefore, essential for agricultural sustainability. The extent and rate of change occurring in the development of information technologies have paved the way for significant change in crop production management and agricultural decision making. Modern frontier technologies involving systems approach towards efficient crop and input management, and scientific land and water use planning, is thereby, the need of this century in India

2 300 Patel et al.: Precision Farming Technologies Int. J. Ecol. Environ. Sci. to optimize yields and profits and reduce pressure on natural resources, thereby leading to sustainable agricultural management. This vision, reflected in the concept of Precision Farming, offers the promise of increasing productivity while decreasing production costs and minimizing environmental impacts. The hightech tools of precision farming are: an integration of several advanced technologies like geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), remote sensing, crop models, ground-based sensors and the Internet. India like other many countries has also begun to integrate remote sensing and GIS as a part of agroinformatics tools in their crop inventory statistics program and the basis for crop forecast (Dadhwal 1986). Under Crop Acreage and Production Estimation (CAPE) project, crops like wheat, rice, groundnut, cotton and rabi sorghum is covered in selected major growing states. In addition to looking at improved ways of integration of crop forecast by different techniques, a FASAL (Forecasting Agricultural Output Using Space, Agrometeorology and Land Observations) project came up for addressing some issues such as (i) improving crop forecast accuracy at district level; (ii) use of microwave data for kharif crop inventory; (iii) use of high resolution data for field by field analysis and (iv) linking crop growth models with remote sensing for improved yield estimation (Dadhwal 1999). With the rapid pace of sensor improvement in the current satellite series (IRS, LANDSAT, SPOT and IKONOS) and some future missions (EYE GLASS, ORB VIEW and GREENSAT), a range of high resolution both spatial and temporal would be available to map and quantify field scale crop response to variable soil, weather condition and farm management practices and thereby help to assist in precise crop management. PRECISION FARMING TECHNOLOGIES AND AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY Precision farming (PF) - also known as prescription farming, variable rate technology (VRT) and site specific agriculture - is a current buzz word among the agricultural circles and considered as the agricultural system of the 21st century, as it symbolizes a better balance between reliance on traditional knowledge and information- and management-intensive technologies. It is an integrated agricultural management strategy where farmers can adjust input use and cultivation methods including seed, fertilizer, pesticide, and water application, varietal selection, planting, tillage, harvesting according to varying soil, crop and other field conditions. PF differs from conventional farming that is based on uniform treatments across a field. A key difference between conventional management and precision agriculture is the application of modern information technologies to provide, process, and analyze multi-source data of high spatial and temporal resolution for decision making and operations in the management of crop production. Thereby, precision technologies can be viewed as technologies that improves the efficiency of inputs applied but requires higher investment capital and labour than traditional technology. It involves mapping and analyzing within field variability and linking spatial relationships to management decisions, thereby helping farmers to look at their farms, crops and practices from an entirely new perspective. PF thus provides a framework of information management system with which farmers can make both production and management decisions. PF promises to revolutionize farm management as it offers a variety of potential benefits in profitability, productivity, sustainability, crop quality, environmental protection, on-farm quality of life, food safety, and rural economic development (Robert 1999). Studies in USA, Canada, Europe and Australia have shown that PF permits reductions in farm inputs without sacrificing crop yields. Refinement and wider application of PF technologies in India can help in lowering production costs, enhancing higher productivity and better utilization of natural resources. For example, sitespecific application of irrigation in wheat of Punjab and Haryana, pesticides in cotton and fertilizers in oil palm in south India and in coffee and tea garden of eastern India can greatly reduce production costs and decrease environmental loading of chemicals. When PF technologies judiciously implemented, farmers could be benefited in many ways. In the shortterm, growers can use forecast based on remote sensing and alleviate problems such as water stress, nutrient deficiency and pests/diseases more effectively. Database-building benefits will be in the form of accurate farm document keeping for effective management of inputs, property, machinery and labor, and efficient monitoring of environmental quality through recording the amounts and location of input applications. In the long-term, farmers can improve efficiency of inputs through applying at exact locations that produce maximum profit margins. PF technologies also increase opportunities for skilled employment in farming. Integrated Technology Components Precision farming technologies provide three basic requirements for precise and sustainable agricultural management These are: (1) ability to identify precise location of field, (2) ability to gather and analyze

3 30: Patel et al.: Precision Farming Technologies 301 information on spatio-temporal variability of soil and crop conditions at field level and (3) ability to adjust input use and farming practices to maximize benefits from each field location. Precision farming involves an integrated technologies such as GPS, GIS, remote sensing, Variable Rate Technology (VRT), crop models, yield monitors and precision irrigation. Various configurations of these technologies are suitable for different PF operations. Information technology such as the Internet are good means for some agri-business companies to deliver their services and products. GPS More recently farmers in USA have gained access to site-specific technology through use of GPS. Currently a constellation of 27 satellites developed by the US Department of Defense provides geospatial accuracy to farm practices and enables farmers to identify and compare characteristics of each field site (location of soil samples or pest data are collected and compared to soil and crop vigor map, respectively). A minimum of four satellites is required to get good positional information. If a GPS receiver is used along with a ground reference station (Differential GPS), any place on earth can be precisely located. A crop scout can use GPS to map a field s insect or weed infestations and illustrate their locations with specific details. Likewise, kinematic GPS can be used for rapid development of accurate topographic maps. GIS It is a computerized data base management and retrieval system, which offers spatial solutions to many problems relating crop productivity and agronomic management. It can integrate all types of spatial and non spatial information collected from different sources and interface with other decision support tools such as crop models. GIS can display analyzed information in maps that allow (a) better understanding of interactions among crop vigour, yield, nutrient status, pests and disease stress, weeds and other factors and (b) decision-making based on such spatial relationships. Recently, many types of commercial and user specific GIS software with varying functionality are available. For example, AGROMA from PCI, AGRIMAPPER and DSSAT v 3.5 with Arc/View interface from IBSNAT A comprehensive farm GIS contains base maps such as topography, soil type, N, P, K and other nutrient levels, soil moisture, ph, etc. Data on crop rotations, tillage, nutrient and pesticide applications, yields, etc. can also be stored. GIS is useful to create fertility, weed and pest intensity maps, which can then be used for making maps that show recommended application rates of nutrients or pesticides. Remote Sensing Satellites have inherent quality of providing information on spatial variability in crops caused by natural and agronomic practices. Some farmers have already received benefits from satellite data. Remotely sensed images from LANDSAT, SPOT and IRS LISS III have been used to distinguish crop species and locate crop stress areas. Commercial satellites to be launched in future are expected to have ideal sensors specifications for Precision farming such as 3-day repeat coverage, 1 to 4 metre spatial resolution and image delivery to users within 15 minutes after acquisition. At present, IKONOS satellite from Space Imaging has capability to provide multi-spectral data with 1 to 4 metres spatial resolution for India which makes it possible to have information on actual state of crop in the field (Figure 1). IKONOS is clearly paving the way toward making agricultural monitoring a reality so that farmers are able to reach their management and planning goals. Moreover, merged images of LISS III + PAN from current IRS series satellites can also show all crop fields (Figure 2) and thereby help in field boundary detection (Figure 3) and updation of cadastral information (Figure 4) along with cultural and management details. Remotely sensed images can show all fields in a village or block and spot problems sooner than ground survey, thereby allowing remedial treatments to be taken up before the stress spreads to other parts of the field. In a field survey, GPS can be used to pinpoint the stressed area for a detailed examination. Crop vitality indicators can also be determined using images acquired at different times during a season. Such data, when used with crop models through calibration or re-initialization of model, can be useful in predicting crop yields (Barnes et al. 1996). VRT One method of controlling variability within field is VRT. VRT allows grower to apply the quantity of crop inputs needed at a precise location in the field based on the individual characteristics of that location. Typical VRT system includes a computer controller, GPS receiver, and GIS map databases. Computer controller adjusts the equipment to vary an application rate of the crop input to be applied. The computer controller is integrated with the GIS database, which contains the flow rate instructions for the application equipment. The computer controller uses the location coordinates from the GPS unit to find the equipment location on the map provided by the GIS unit. The computer controller reads the instructions from the GIS system and varies the rate of the crop input being applied as the equipment crosses the field. The computer controller will record the actual rates applied at each

4 302 Patel et al.: Precision Farming Technologies Int. J. Ecol. Environ. Sci. Figure 1. Ikonos 4 metre resolution (a) false colour image and (b) NDVI image showing variation within field.

5 30: Patel et al.: Precision Farming Technologies 303 Figure 2. Grape fields (A) as seen in merged image of IRS LISS III + PAN, Niphad tehsil of Nasik District. Figure 3. Field boundaries as seen in LISS III and PAN merged image (1:25000 scale).

6 304 Patel et al.: Precision Farming Technologies Int. J. Ecol. Environ. Sci. Figure 4. Cadastral map over laid on IRS IC Image, Moraiya village, Ahmedabad. location in the field and store the information in the GIS system, thus maintaining precise field maps of materials applied. Yield Monitors These are crop yield measuring devices installed on harvesting equipment. The yield data from the monitor is recorded and stored at regular intervals along with positional data received from the GPS unit. GIS software takes the yield data and produces yield maps. CURRENT STATUS OF INDIAN AGRICULTURE Phenomenal development in agricultural growth in India is achieved following the Green revolution in late 1960 s and early 1970 s. Production of food grains between to jumped from 50.8 million Mg to million Mg (Ministry of Agriculture 2000). Despite the fact that food grains productivity as also output from agriculture increases manifold, long-term production efficiency was compromised. Even regional diversity in agricultural development were further encountered because of varying levels of investment in rural infrastructure and technological innovations. For example, growth rates of yield was quite high in north-western states, but the performance of eastern region remain dismal, which continued to record low growth in yield per hectare. The dramatic increase in India s grain output from 50 million Mg to 200 million Mg in last five decades was mainly resulted from a combination of factors including farm machinery, fertilizers and pesticides, irrigation and replacement of traditional crops with high yielding varieties (Rao 1995). The increase in input use is especially high in India. For example, irrigated area as a share of gross cropped area rose substantially from 20% in 1950 to 42% in This was also coupled by an increase in consumption of fertilizers from 0.5 kg ha!1 to as much as 90 kg ha!1 (Table 1). Pesticides consumption also rise from 24,000 Mg in 1950 to 75,000 Mg in Further, nearly 76 out of 124 million ha of area under food grains were covered by high yielding varieties in Destabilization of natural resources and environment was brought forth by the cumulative phenomena of enhanced chemical use, salinisation, water logging and accelerated soil erosion. Many farmers use these high levels of crop inputs but efficiencies of these inputs are, however, quite low because they are not being used judiciously. In general, farmers grow high yielding varieties of crop but majority of them still do not follow properly the recommended soil-water-input-crop management practices, resulting in lowering of productivity and hence lower economic return.

7 30: Patel et al.: Precision Farming Technologies 305 Table 1. Use of inputs in Indian Agriculture ( ). Inputs Projected 2001 Seeds Breeder seeds, x 10 3 Mg Certified seeds, x 10 3 Mg Chemicals Fertilizers (NPK), x 10 5 Mg Nitrogen, x 10 5 Mg Phosphorus, x 10 5 Mg Potassium, x 10 5 Mg Total NPK, kg per ha Pesticides, 10 3 Mg Agronomic management Irrigation, x 10 6 ha High Yielding Varieties Rice, x 10 6 ha Wheat, x 10 6 ha Total food grains, x 10 6 ha Soil conservation, x 10 6 ha (from Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India 2000). As a result arable land in India is increasingly unable to support burden of intensive agriculture. Recently, estimates shows that growth rates for yield in majority of crops decline alarmingly over last decade (Table 2). Many farmers are heavily in debt by relying on costly chemicals and rural un-employment is increasing. These are ominous sign of deteriorating farm economy. Excessive pumping during the rice growing season in Punjab and Haryana has led to a drop in the ground water table by 15 to 20 metre with an average of half a metre a year (Abrol 1998). Intensive cropping in India has also virtually mined both macro and micro nutrients from soil. Indiscriminate use of pesticides, so far, has resulted in the disruption of ecosystem because of death of both target and non target species, accumulation of pesticides in the food and eventual build up of pesticides resistance by the target species. This calls for serious introspection into the relevance of our existing farming technologies to achieve sustainability in Indian agriculture. It is an urgent need to generate and disseminate specific system of management of crops, input and natural resources to sustain high productivity and ensure profit maximization while preserving our fragile agro-ecosystem. The solution undoubtedly lies in appealing to scientific and technological innovations Table 2. Annual growth rate for yield (Y) and production (P) in India (%). Crop Y P Y P Y P Rice Wheat Sugarcane Cereals Pulses Non-food grains (from Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India 2000). precision farming technologies which can improve the carrying capacity of limited land to ensure food security to present as well as projected population on a sustainable basis. Prospects of Precision Farming Technologies In the new millennium, the challenges in the Indian agricultural sector are quite different from those met in

8 306 Patel et al.: Precision Farming Technologies Int. J. Ecol. Environ. Sci. previous decades. The enormous pressure to provide more food from less land with shrinking natural resources is a tough task for the farmers This calls for special efforts to manage the key inputs without eroding the ecological assets and sound knowledge base to sustain agricultural productivity and sustainability. Geographically, India is widely distributed into several agro-climatic zones, and the information need for the farming systems in these areas are entirely different. Integrating the application of available technologies to realize farmers goals requires a systems approach to farming. Effective implementation of systems approaches requires timely access to site-specific information. So far, we are adopting the traditional systems to disseminate the information to the farmers. In this system, there is a plenty of time gap in reaching the information to the farmers. The information should be accurate and should reach at right time. Unfortunately, many farmers may not be aware of new innovations and techniques to be adopted in farming systems. But the rapid growth of the Information Technology and Communications Systems has changed the Indian scenario in the world market to look at every sphere from entirely a new perspective. The emergence of Internet and systems had changed the interrelations of personal contact. The Government of India has realised the importance of the Information Technology and Communication Systems and need to adopt in India in all functional areas. The linking of villages with wired network has come true in some parts of India. Some of the examples are (1) Warna Wired Villages (2) M.S. Swaminathan Info Villages, etc. Warna Nagar is small village which has demonstrated the effective contribution of an Information Technology and Communication Systems in village network. The information has been shared by a cluster of 70 villages surrounded by the WARNA village in the districts of Kolhapur and Sangli of Maharashtra State. The Warna Wired Village project has been started to serve the information needs on different cultivation practices, pesticides and diseases control, marketing, dairy and sugarcane processing unit etc. to the farmers, right up to their village level. Setting up of such Info village with computer network in different clusters of villages will open new vistas for improving dissemination of agricultural information in right time to address farming activities at village level. M.S. Swaminathan, an eminent agricultural scientist has also stressed the need of wide spread adoption of the concept of Info village in India to cater the information needs of precise farming techniques by for enhancing farm economy. Precision farming technologies have been developed in western countries where farm and socioeconomic conditions are much different than in India. A question may therefore arise on its scope in India, where a vast majority of population is subsistencebased, and strategies and perception of risk by farmers are totally different. It must be noted, however, that even under subsistence farming, several decisions (application rates of seeds, fertilizers and other inputs) have to be made for optimizing yields and income. As PF technologies assist farmers in improved decision making, and have the potential to reduce or remove the effects of limiting factors on the farm, a convincing case can be made on their suitability to Indian conditions. Ever since the introduction of Green Revolution technologies in 1960s, however, farmers of India have adopted traditional approach of agronomic management leading to application of inputs in areas not needing them or where the crops cannot make full use of them. Progress can be achieved if we shift our mindset from a commodity centered approach to an entire cropping or system based on integrated natural resource management strategy. The micro-spatial scale has often been neglected in favour of the regional and national scales. For example, fertilizer guidelines by agricultural experimental stations in India were primarily developed on a regional scale by considering the mean fertility of few experimental fields. In addition, huge subsidies on fertilizers and pesticides, and labor shortage in some areas forced farmers to use the same application rates across the entire field. Ignorance of input-response functions also led to excessive use, for example, fertilizer use increased from 32 kg ha!1 in 1980 to 90 kg ha!1 in 1998 (Table 1). Pesticide recommendations are also regional and are based on a few random observations of pest density. Because of low quality of agrochemicals often due to adulteration and increased pest resistance, indiscriminate application is now common, especially in high value crops. Hefty subsidies on electricity for pumping water in some states like Haryana and Punjab have led to over-exploitation of groundwater and misuse on farms leading to waterlogging and salinity. Hence, judicious adoption of PF technologies can help in reversing this trend. Precision farming technologies is a suite of many high-tech tools but there is no need to adopt all PF technologies at once to start benefitting from them. Many farmers can begin by using only a part of the technology, as even partial use can bring many benefits. In fact, applying the entire range of technologies is not profitable in several cases, particularly for technologies that are not scale-neutral. For example, small farmers in India cannot afford on their own, but some private sector support is needed for the advancement of data acquisition and analysis methods, including sensing

9 30: Patel et al.: Precision Farming Technologies 307 technologies, sampling methods, data base systems, and geospatial methods. Some of the agribusiness companies like Nagarjuna Fertilizers Company Limited, BAYER India Limited and Mahyco Seeds Private Limited should come forward and get actively involved in extending the services on precision farming technologies to the farmers someway. There are many companies involved in these extension activities and are helping the farmers. Precision farming technologies are likely to provide a greater profitability advantage for (a) high-value crops, (b) areas where input costs are high, and (c) areas where production conditions are very heterogeneous (Srinivasan 1999). In India, rice, wheat, sugarcane, potato, and cotton among the field crops, and grape, tea, coffee and rubber among horticultural crops are perhaps the most relevant for PF. Adoption of PF techniques aimed at irrigation management, nutrient management and integrated pest management will obviously be a priority for such crops. M.S. Swaminathan, an eminent agriculturist of India, has also stressed the adoption of precision farming in Assam to set a target of 10 million Mg rice by 2007 through hybrid seeds, assured irrigation, appropriate technology and other inputs (Swaminathan 2000a). Water savings through irrigation management and precision delivery to crops are essential in India, where per capita water resources are declining alarmingly. For example, our cotton yields are less than 20 percent of yields in Egypt and USA, despite 25 times much water used to raise a tonne of cotton in India (Swaminathan 2000b). Adoption of precision farming may be the need of hour to increase water use efficiency and thereby increase in the income of cotton growers. With the rapid development in integrated natural resource information management technology, a combination of spatial topography, remote sensing derived crop vigour, evapotranspiration from weather forecast and some villagewise infrared thermometric measurements by agricultural departmental staff can be easily made available to farmers for optimizing the timing, amounts and placement of water among various field locations. Improving nutrient use efficiency is also important from a macro-economic point of view. Farmers in Punjab and Haryana have had to apply ever increasing quantities of conventional fertilizers to prevent their crop yields from dropping and thus it is becoming increasingly difficult for farmers to make a profit. Besides, sudden and steep reductions in subsidies, however, lead to a decline in fertilizer consumption as has happened in India in the 1990s. As PF technologies can facilitate higher yields with the same, or even less, inputs while simultaneously conserving the soil and water, their rapid adoption in Indian agriculture is worthful. An attempt has been made to develop Soil Resource Information System (SRIS) in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu by employing GIS aided integration of the physical and chemical properties of soil resources of an individual farm (Siwaswamy et al. 2000) Such SRIS can facilitates farmers decision on soil and land management practices like both macro and micro nutrient application and choice of tillage operation like summer and chisel ploughing. Even a part of precision farming technologies such as high resolution remote sensing, GIS and GPS can provide locational and spatial soil variability required for discriminating application of fertilizers on basis of soil and leaf testing of individual small holdings for attaining cost efficiency to sustain rubber production in Kerala and Kanyakumari districts of Tamil Nadu (Mathew 2000). Precision farming technologies are also to play a key role in insect/pest management of high value crops like cotton as percent of the total quantity of pesticides used in the country is sprayed on cotton. Excessive and indiscriminate use of insecticides have further resulted into a pest resistance, ecosystem disturbance and indebtness among cotton growers. Farmers in Punjab had sprayed Rs. 380 crores worth of pesticides on cotton in 1988 and in return earned only Rs. 250 crores from seed cotton (Sharma 1999). As a result of this pest resistance to pesticides, over 500 cotton farmers in India have committed suicides to escape the humiliation of indebtedness (Sharma 1999). Integrated Pest Management (IPM) has been recommended to reduce insecticide use but the detailed records required for IPM can make pest control more expensive over the years, because of increasing labour costs. Some studies carried out by National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad have demonstrated the potential of satellite remote sensing technology for management of pests like Brown Plant Hopper in rice and white fly (Bemissia tabacci) in cotton. Past experiences with satellite data was largely based on remotely sensed data from medium resolution sensors. Data from high spatial and spectral resolution satellite like IKONOS from Space Imaging and future IRS satellite like RESOURCESAT could be need for insect pest management. The integration of GPS with high resolution imagery offers to map insect infestation in GIS environment. Precision farming technologies also enable Locust Warning Organisations to develop regional maps of locust infestation in most vulnerable states like Gujarat and Rajasthan. There are many other scope of using precision farming technologies in India for improving agricultural sustainability but all these can be possible by formation of time bound policy framework and devising strategy to tackle various hurdles to adoption of precision farming technologies.

10 308 Patel et al.: Precision Farming Technologies Int. J. Ecol. Environ. Sci. Limitations for Adoption of PF Technologies There are many limitations in adopting this high-tech precision farming technologies in India, some of them include: (a) High cost of obtaining site-specific satellite data, (b) Lack of willingness to share spatial data among various organizations, (c) Complexity of tools and techniques requiring new skills, (d) Culture, attitude and perceptions of farmers including resistance to adoption of new techniques and lack of awareness of agro-environmental problems, (e) Farmers inability to afford high-tech farm equipments, (f) Small farms, heterogeneity of cropping systems, and land tenure/ ownership restrictions, (g) Infrastructure and institutional constraints including market imperfections, (h) Lack of success stories of PF adoption and lack of demonstrated impacts on yields, (i) Lack of local technical expertise, (j) Uncertainty on returns from investments to be made on new equipment and information management systems, (k) Lack of transformation of technical know - how to farmers in local language, and (l) Knowledge and technological gaps including inadequate understanding of agronomic factors and their interaction, lack of understanding of the geostatistics necessary for displaying spatial variability of crops and soils using current mapping software, and limited ability to integrate information from diverse sources with varying resolutions and intensities. CONCLUSIONS It is very early to relate precision farming technologies to Indian agriculture but there are numerous opportunities for adoption. An upcoming of Warna village and Info village concept would surely encourage some big farmers in Punjab and Haryana to adopt precision farming technologies on a limited scale with support from private sector. In India, precision farming perhaps only the option left to realize farmer s goals to increase the crop production, reduce cost of production and eliminate the risk of environmental disasters. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We gratefully acknowledge Dr P.K. Champati Ray for critically reading of the manuscripts and useful suggestions. REFERRENCES 165, In: Sustainable Agricultural Development Compatible with Environmental Conservation in Asia. Proceedings of the Fourth JIRCAS International Symposium (Tsukuba, September JIRCAS, Tsukuba, Japan): Barnes, E.M., Moran, M.S., Pinter Jr., P.J. and Clarke, T.R Multispectral remote sensing and site specific agriculture. Examples of current technology and future possibilities. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Precision Agriculture: Dadhwal, V.K Remote sensing studies for wheat inventory assessment. Proceedings of the Fifth Asian Agriculture Symposium, Kumomoto, Japan (19-20 November 1986): Dadhwal, V.K Remote sensing applications for agriculture. Retrospective and perspective. Pages 11-22, In: Proceedings National Symposium on Remote Sensing Applications for Natural Resources: Retrospective and Perspective, January Indian Society of Remote Sensing, Dehradun. Mathew, K.J Focus on cost efficiency. pages 85-88, In: Survey of Indian Agriculture, The Hindu, Madras. Ministry of Agriculture Agricultural statistics at a glance. Directorate of Economics and Statistics. Department of Agricultur and Cooperation, Government of India. New Delhi, India. Rao, U.R Space technology for achieving food and environmental security. pages , In: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Spectral Sensing Research, 26 November-1December 1995, Melbourne, Australia. Robert, P.C Precision agriculture: Research needs and status in the USA. pages 19-33, In: Stafford, J.V. (Editor) Precision Agriculture 99, Volume 1. Society of Chemical Industry, London. Sharma, D Farmers suicides: the pest in pesticides. Business Line, 24 August: Siwasamy, R., Natrajan, S., Palaniswamy, C. and Mani, S.C Soil Resource Information System for precision agriculture. pages , In: Proceedings of the Geoinformatics Beyond Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun. Srinivasan, A Precision farming in Asia: Progress and prospects. pages , In: Robert, P.C., Rust, R.H. and Larson, W.E. (Editors) Precision Agriculture Part A. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Precision Agriculture, July 1998, St. Paul, USA. American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America, USA. Swaminathan, M Swaminathan for integrated intensive farming in Assam. Press Trust of India, New Delhi (News). Swaminathan, M Natural Resource Management - For an evergreen revolution. pages 9-17, In: Survey of Indian Agriculture, The Hindu, Madras. Abrol, I.P Sustaining rice-wheat cropping system productivity in the Indo-Gangetic plains. pages 155-