Fields of The Future

Context: In the backdrop of the challenges from the 4th industrial revolution, agriculture needs disruptive digital thinking.

Issues faced by agricultural economy:

• Decline of agriculture in Capitalism and Market economy: born out of Industrial Revolutions, created huge job opportunities and helped with the assimilation of the agrarian workforce into the secondary and tertiary segments of the economy.
• Sectoral income inequalities: about 60% of the global population is still dependent, directly or indirectly, on agriculture but is contributing only 4% to the world GDP - Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
  • In India: GDP contribution of Agriculture sector (12-15%) (higher than the world average)
• Challenges of 4th industrial revolution: as secondary and tertiary sectors which traditionally absorbed agricultural workforce are now themselves vulnerable to job losses due to disruptive technologies like -  
  • Artificial intelligence, robotics, cognitive analytics, 3D printing, genomics.

• A new approach towards agrarian economy:
  • Fixation of prices: of all the agricultural primary goods on a day-to-day basis or periodically by the local farming community using already available digital technologies.
    • For e.g. A First Trade Minimum Price where the first trader will have to procure at above-fixed prices and later transaction can be dependent on market forces.
    • Using technologies: to fix the prices.
    • Enable the farming community to also decide the prices of their products like the secondary and tertiary segments of the economy.