Banking Frontiers – July 2019

Conference Highlights

Banking Frontiers, in association with The Weather Company, an IBM
Business, organized a roundtable conference in Chennai to discuss the
role of technology in the agriculture ecosystem.

T

he digital wave has enormously
transformed all businesses and the
agricultural sector is no different.
The prediction about returns from the
sector gets the highest level of accuracy
when mediums like satellites, drones,
mobile devices, fuel pumps, commodity
markets, exchanges etc are used. Farmers
can use these key information factors and
then determine the success or failure of
the crops. They can thus reduce risks and
maximize returns.
Industry experts as well as officials from
state governments, NABARD, financial
institutions and weather prediction
companies, who participated in the
roundtable, share their perspectives on the
current scenario and future of agriculture
eco system.

P Venkatachalapathy, State Nodal Officer,
National eGovernance Plan for Agriculture
(NeGP-A)
Rice is the predominant crop in Tamil
Nadu. The farmers are cultivating rice in
20 lakh hectares while the rest of the farm

area is covered by 126 horticulture crops

and other crops. In north India, there is

kharif and rabbi seasons, but south India

has 3 types seasons for crop cultivation -

April to July, September to December and

January to April. The south-west monsoon

is there from June to September in which

average rainfall is 921 mm, while the south-

east monsoon provides 38% of the rainfall.

Rain-deficit farmers are poor and they

mainly depend on the rainfall pattern. They

thus need highly accurate weather forecasts.

They also need technology assistance and

financial assistance as well.

Tamil Nadu has 7.9 million farmers, 7.3

million of them small and marginal farmers

having below 5 hectares of land. During the

April to July season the state has more rice

Introducing the topic to the panelists

DIGITAL

Frontiers in Farming

KNOWLEDGE PARTNER