Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi and Labor and Employment Minister Anil Rajbhar prominently participated in the Ag-Tech Start-up Summit-2024 organized at Hotel Taj in Lucknow with the aim of promoting innovations in the agricultural sector and empowering agriculture through technology.
At the summit, Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi highlighted the possibilities of the agriculture sector of Uttar Pradesh. He said that Uttar Pradesh has vast potential in the agriculture sector which can play an important role in empowering the economy of the state and the country.
Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target of a $ 5 trillion economy, Shahi said that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath aims to make Uttar Pradesh a $ 1 trillion economy, and the contribution of the agriculture sector in this will be extremely important.
The Agriculture Minister informed that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has launched the Ag-Tech Policy 2024, which aims to encourage innovations in agriculture. He said that India is a powerhouse of agriculture not only for itself but for the whole world. He said that Uttar Pradesh has up to 75 percent of cultivable land, which is an important strength in this direction.
Emphasizing the interests of farmers, Shahi said that the government is trying to ensure that every farmer gets the maximum price for his production. Many schemes and programs are being implemented for this. He talked about giving priority to digitalization in the agriculture sector under Digital India. He informed that the Government of India also informed about the possibilities of technology in important schemes like soil health testing, farm and farmer registration and weather gauge station under digital agriculture.
Labor and Employment Minister Anil Rajbhar also shared his views at the summit. He said that technology and digital innovation have become very important in today’s era and the agriculture sector should also not remain untouched by this change. Rajbhar emphasized the need to motivate farmers to use modern techniques so that they can get a fair price for their production.
He also discussed the benefits of technology and digitalization in agriculture and said that this will not only give better production to the farmers but will also strengthen their economic condition. Rajbhar appreciated the steps taken by the government in this direction and hoped that these efforts will play an important role in improving the condition of the farmers.
During the summit, Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Singh launched the Vision Document on the occasion of Ag-Tech Start-up Summit-2024. This document is an important step towards innovations and technological development in the agriculture sector and provides a roadmap for the development of agriculture in the future.
Ag-Tech Start-up Summit-2024 in Uttar Pradesh was inaugurated by Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Singh with the lighting of the lamp. In this inaugural session, Agriculture Production Commissioner Monica S Garg delivered the inaugural address. After this, Vinayak Ghatate of the World Bank emphasized on scaling up innovations through UP Agris.
Karthik Padmanabhan, Head of Google for Startups, spoke on the use of new technologies in his address. Siddharth Prakash of Google and Vijayasekar Kalvakonda of IFC discussed the agriculture network in Uttar Pradesh. Wendy Werner of IFC shared her views on private sector solutions and impact. This was followed by a video launch on Agritech scaling up and release of “Vision Document for Agritech” by Government of Uttar Pradesh.
The session discussed making Crop Stack open source and remote-sensing based crop monitoring in Uttar Pradesh. This was followed by sharing of experiences on scaling up of Agritech. On impact assessment, Deepa Chakrapani presented findings of preliminary assessment, and Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad gave scenario assessment and policy recommendations on Uttar Pradesh Agtech.
The evening session was chaired by Hemendra Mathur on the topic of Digitalizing Agriculture, which was attended by representatives from Agri Bazaar, Avishkar Group, Google Cloud and World Bank. A session was also held on Livestock and Dairy Development, in which representatives from UP Livestock Development Board and various companies shared their views.
