CII meet calls for predictive, sustainable agri solutions

Vemuri Chowdary, Group Director (Agri Sciences & Applications) of ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), has said that Agriculture 4.0 requires integration of all technologies in the food chain.

“Precision agriculture would help in reducing the cost and increasing the yields. Climate change is impacting agriculture in a big way. Instead of focusing on policy-level approaches, we need to adopt a farmer-focused approach,” he said.

Chowdary was addressing the Agri Vision 2025 conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII-Telangana) here on Tuesday.

The third edition of the conference focussed on ‘Digital Agriculture for Enhancing Productivity and Sustainability’.

“Monitoring crops through satellites will help in understanding the harvest progress and estimating the yield outputs, which will reach the markets,” Chowdary said.

Amit Vastyayan, Parter & Leader (Social & Skills Sector) of EY, said that technologies should be accessible to marginal farmers and women farmers. “Our agricultural productivity in India is way lower than the global levels,” he said.

Anil Kumar V Epur, Past Chairman of CII Southern Region, said that a serious concern that farmers faced was a wide disparity in the yield levels when compared to other countries.

V Praveen Rao, Advisor (CII Telangana Agri & Food Processing Panel) and Vice Chancellor of Kaveri University, said that digital agriculture would drive the future. “We should develop digital technologies that can give us predictive and preventive solutions instead of just being reactive,” he said.

“There is a need to design technologies in local languages and make them accessible to all farmers,” he added.

R S Reddy, Chairman of CII Telangana, said the digital innovations must go hand-in-hand with sustainable practices to address challenges like climate change, resource scarcity and market volatility. 

Published on April 29, 2025