Day 22: Kota, Taleda – Scientists Visiting the Drone Demonstrations

The agri-science community in India is very active, and they do not leave a chance to explore anything new and interesting in the world of agricultural technology. In the recent times, the buzz around drone technologies in India is rising substantially, aided by the big announcement by our Hon. Prime Minister Narendra Modi to allow technology aided farming via drones. The government has further announced subsidies for farming institutions, farming processing companies and more which has resulted in a lot of traction for drones in farming.

During our Drone Yatra, we visited multiple agricultural institutions in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, doing demonstrations for students who are the future of agriculture in the country. This also brought a lot of scientists to the demonstrations who wanted to see the drone in action and understand its functioning from a scientific point of view about how it is effective in comparison to a regular sprayer.

Something similar happened today. Welcome to Day 3 in Rajasthan, we will be covering Kota and Taleda in today’s journey. Our day started off with a bang. When we arrived in Kota, we received news that scientists from KVK (Krishi Vigyan Kendra) are visiting. The Assistant Director of Agriculture of Kota was also present at the event.

We went ahead with the demonstrations and then settled in for a detailed discussion with the KVK scientists about how the drone technology is supposed to bring in a change to the lives of farmers across India. We briefed them about out initiative about the Drone Yatra and what we have set to achieve with it. They were genuinely impressed and wanted us to visit the campus to provide a demo for the students as well, but due to certain scheduling conflicts we were unable to.

Yet, our discussions were very fruitful as they revolved around how effective the drones are in spraying the chemicals and how they cover the crops fully from all sides with very minimal wastage. That is what allows the drones to operate and delivery an effective dosage to the crops by using up to 90% less water as compared to manual sprays. They are now planning to inculcate drone spraying technology in their regular curriculum considering it is the technology of the future and it is the need of the hour that the students graduating in agriculture sciences should be aware of what to expect in the fields.

We further went to Taleda, conducted successful demonstrations on groundnut fields and assured the very eager and excited farmers that the drone spray service will be launched very soon in their region.

We now move to Ajmer for next demonstrations on Day 4 of Rajasthan, stay tuned!