The government is considering adding 21 airports under the Krishi Udan scheme to help increase export of agri products; it is also confident that drone application in the farm sector will expand beyond spraying of chemical pesticides, even as focus shifts to organic and natural farming.
“We have to adopt three-pronged global strategy for the agri ecosystem to make a mark on the world food system. There should be smart, sustainable and serve to all (3S) strategies to help the agri sector find solution,” Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia told mediapersons at the first Agriculture Deputies Meeting (ADM) of the Agriculture Working Group (AWG) of G20.
Asked about the scope for growth in the drone sector amid the rising focus on natural farming, as the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)s are currently used only for spraying chemical pesticides, the minister said there could be more applications, including in organic and natural farming.
Explaining India’s 3S strategy, Scindia said smart agriculture has adopted nascent technology like drone, whereas sustainability has been achieved with increased Budget allocations that made agricultural inputs and technology available to farmers, besides support in agri marketing.
He said the deliberations at the G20 AWG under India’s presidency will help create a roadmap for the world in the farm sector. The next three meetings of AWG are lined up in Chandigarh, Varanasi and Hyderabad.
He said the Ministry of Civil Aviation is in talks with the Ministry of Defence to include another 21 airports under the Krishi Udan scheme.
In December last year, Minister of State for Civil Aviation VK Singh said in the Lok Sabha that, initially, 53 airports were covered in the pilot project for six months and five more airports were added after the Krishi Udan Scheme 2.0 was announced in October 2021.
The scheme mainly focuses on transporting perishable food products from hilly areas, the North-East and tribal areas by facilitating and incentivising movement through air transportation. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) provides, under the scheme, full waiver of landing, parking, terminal navigational landing charges (TNLC), and route navigation facility charges (RNFC) for Indian freighters and P2C (passenger-to-cargo) aircraft.
Some of the successful instances of air transportation include king chillies, Burmese grapes and Assamese lemon from Gauwahati; jackfruit from Tripura; and litchi from Darbhanga.