Shri Sharad Pawar, then Minister of Agriculture launched NAIP on 26th July, 2006 with a total budget of 250 million US dollars (world bank will fund 200 million dollars as credit and Govt, of India will contribute 50 million dollars.
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Objectives:
1. To give the agricultural research and technology development system an explicit development and business perspective through innovative models.
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2. To make the National Agricultural Research System a ‘pluralistic’ system where every organisation having stake in agricultural research: public, private or civil society, has to play a role.
3. Working in well defined partnership groups with clear common goals and understanding sharing responsibilities and benefits.
4. Funding through competition so that a wide choice of excellent innovative ideas come in from the stakeholders.
5. Work with focus, plan and time frames.
Precision farming or precision agriculture
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It is an agricultural concept relying on the existence of in-field variability. It requires the use of new technology, such as global positioning (GPS), sensors, satellites or aerial images, and information management tools (GIS) to assess and understand variations. Collected information may to more and to more accurately predict crop yields. It seeks to avoid applying inflexible practices to a crop, regardless of local soil/ climate conditions, and may help to better assess local situations of disease or lodging.
Satellites allow farmers to easily survey their land. Global Positioning Systems (GPS) monitor can find the location of a field to within one meter. It can then present a series of GIS maps that demonstrate which field are moist or dry, and where there is erosion of soil and other soil factors that stunt crop growth. The data can be used by the farmer to automatically regulate the machine application of fertilizer and pesticide.
The US. Department of Agriculture, NASA, and NOAA are among key agencies contributing to this revolution in large-scale agriculture. The goal is to improve farmers’ profits and harvest yields while reducing the negative impacts of farming on the environment that come from over application of chemicals.
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In India also this concept is gaining importance at present at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore Tamil Nadu, a project Precision Farming is running under Director of Ext. Education to provide information about precision farming and its benefits to farmers and society.
Precision farming is an agricultural system that has the potential of dramatically change agriculture scenario in 21st century. Precision agriculture is doing right thing at the right time. Knowing about the right thing involves data collection to a correct and viable decision.