‘Bring digital technology closer to farming community’

Anantapur-Puttaparthi: Evolving a sustainable natural farming system is the need of hour to undo all the damage done by Western agriculture practices brought into India less than a decade ago as part of “Green Revolution” replacing the 5,000-year-old proven indigenous methods, opined Accion Freterna Ecology Centre Director Y V Malla Reddy.

Interacting with the participants at the day-long workshop here on Friday organised by the Centre For Agriculture And Biosciences International (CABI) as part of training master trainers at the ground level in undivided Anantapur district on bringing digital technologies closer to the farming community, Malla Reddy said controlling pests alone cannot be looked at narrowly. “Agriculture practice needs to be looked at holistically and not in a narrow manner at problem/management of pests or nutrition and the whole exercise should be for empowering the farmers,” he added. CABI Digital Tools Coordinator for South Asia Madhu Manjari and Plantwise Regional Coordinator Malavika Chowdhary said that through the creation and application of digital technologies, the CABI brings science-based agricultural knowledge to millions of smallholder farmers helping them increase their yields.

The participants were given a group task by posing a mock problem to solve through the CABI applications and asked to find solutions in their database.