By Arooj Zulfiqar

ISLAMABAD August 4, (INP-WealthPK): Digital transformation will boost Pakistan’s agriculture sector and help strengthen the national economy, WealthPK reports.

According to an expert, Pakistan is an agricultural country so the sector cannot be ignored in any policy devised for the development of its economy. The use of modern technology will change the agricultural landscape of the country, enabling farmers to increase their yield and become more competitive.

Dr Nowsherwan, a senior scientific officer at the National Agriculture Research Centre (NARC), told WealthPK that the digital transformation of the agriculture sector could help boost the national economy by enabling farmers to increase their income through better crop production.

“Enough attention is not paid to digitalisation of agriculture in Pakistan,” he said, adding that the use of modern technology in agriculture could cast great impacts on the sector.

“The digital transformation can help farmers to monitor the weather. Monitoring accurate weather conditions is an important feature of this new data-based agronomy sector. It will help farmers to address difficulties and optimise their labour, crop health and usage of water. It will inform them about possible rains. The growers will be able to adjust their farming activities according to the weather conditions,” he said.

Dr Nowsherwan said that the use of modern technology would also enable the farmers to manage the temperature. “We have seen that this year an unprecedented heat wave in April severely harmed our crops, particularly wheat and barley. We could have taken preventative measures if it was known to us in advance,” he added.

He said that modern technology was needed to get informed in advance about the change in temperature. “Technology can help us to control the damage by taking preventive measures,” he added.

The expert said that data of the highest and the lowest temperature should be carefully systematised to know the possible change in advance. “By doing so, the computer can detect intermediate data automatically and direct us,” he added.

He said that the database could help in predicting the future temperature and weather. “For example, data on chilies can inform us in which season they are cultivated and how many diseases are present at that time. Therefore, it is possible to create an information App that would assist farmers in learning about disease outbreaks in advance,” he explained.

Dr Nowsherwan said that the method, also known as a remote system, is operating quite well in other countries. “However, it has not yet been formally implemented in Pakistan, and experiments have only been conducted at the university level,” he added.

He said that some farmers independently created models based on digital transformation using remote sensing on a small scale. In some areas, systems have been installed by the irrigation department to ascertain the need for irrigation. For example, less rain in the summer may result in increased evaporation, and therefore this system will alert farmers of a possible water shortage so they can make appropriate management decisions,” he added.

The expert said that the government should support digital transformation, assist farmers in resolving their problems and engage with engineering institutes to develop the system. He said that there should be a separate system for each crop to cope with the problems by getting advice from experts on production technique and temperature or by getting area-wise information.

“This technology should be developed by the information technology industry to improve our agricultural system. We have good programmers, who can create better software to manage this system,” he told WealthPK.

Credits: Independent News Pakistan—Wealthpk