Technology Diffusion in Agriculture

 Extract from WIPO report:

Precision agriculture technologies

PATs use sensors, satellite navigation, and data analytics to optimize farming operations. In general, there are three broad categories for PATs: (i) the data collection (sensors, satellite navigation), (ii) the data processing and/or analysis (yield monitoring, soil mapping), and (iii) the decision-making guidance (auto-steering tractors, variable-rate applications of fertilizers and pesticides). (23)

Farmers in Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States lead in the adoption of PATs. (24)

The US pioneered PATs in the 1980s, with adoption accelerating once global positioning systems (GPS) became widely available after 1983. (25) Most of the technologies used were related to grid sampling, fertilizer mapping, and pH as well as yield measurement. Since the 2000s, American farmers have been adopting auto-guidance system and variable rate technologies (VRTs) to reduce the cost of managing their farms. (26)

However, the adoption of PATs remains gradual. Studies show that farmers typically adopt individual PAT components rather than a complete system. (27) This is partly due to the high upfront cost of purchasing PATs.

Less than one-third of US farmers use any PAT tools whatsoever and adoption occurs in modules rather than complete systems. (28) In Europe, for example, entry level PATs include automatic milking systems, digital field records and automatic steerage systems. (29)

In addition, the PATs predominantly adopted vary according to agricultural need. Water scarcity led to the adoption of micro-irrigation in India, for example, whereas farmers in the US and Australia focus more on adopting guidance systems for large-scale cropping.

India's spending on technology imports- more or less??

Technology imports are an indication of technology diffusion and technology absorption capability. Like Indis's R&D spending, the figures on technology imports do not tell the full story.

CTIER HandbookCTIER Handbook: Technology and Innovation in India 2023 is comprehensive with the above limitations.

From the report:

Based on firm level data5 available for industry, the figure above shows a steady increase for technology payments (that includes royalty and technical fees)6 between 2017-18 and 2020-21. India’s total technology payments on the other hand as reported by the RBI has seen a steady increase over the same period.7 There has been a drop in the number of firms over the five years for whom technology payments data is available. It is unclear whether the difference between the industry level data and the aggregate data has been entirely due to unavailability of firm level data. Currently, a breakdown of RBI’s technology payments data by industry is unavailable. Furthermore, it is also difficult to discern from the aggregate level data how much of the payments were towards patented technologies by higher technology or knowledge intensive firms and how much of it may have been towards payments for copyrights and trademarks.