Modi and Netanyahu discuss technological intervention in farms to revolutionize Indian agriculture

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu will on Wednesday inaugurate a Centre of Excellence for date palms in Bhuj and visit existing facilities for protected vegetable cultivation in Vadrad, Gujarat. The move is part of the two countries’ commitments of cooperation in farm sector for revolutionizing agriculture through technological interventions.
The Centres of Excellence (CoE), set up jointly by both the countries in different states across India, provide a suitable platform for rapid transfer of technology to farmers. The Bhuj centre is part of 28 such CoE.
“We exchanged views on scaling up the Centers of Excellence that have been a main-stay of agricultural cooperation by bringing in advanced Israeli practices and technology”, said the Prime Minister Modi while jointly addressing media here with Netanyahu on Monday.
Referring to cooperation in the field of agriculture, Netanyahu said he presented to Prime Minister Modi “an idea of revolutionizing Indian agriculture as we're revolutionizing Israeli agriculture”. He emphasised on the concept of precision agriculture which works on the model of precise input to individual plant for efficient use of resources including water.
“Some plants need more water, some less. We can see it today with big data, with drones, with other instruments of technology to make farmers produce much more crops. More crops with less”, said the Israeli PM while noting importance of technology-driven precision agriculture.
Both the Prime Ministers will be in Gujarat on Wednesday where they will also visit the iCreate innovation campus in Ahmedabad. The iCreate is an independent centre which aims to facilitate creation of next generation entrepreneurs. Besides grooming potential entrepreneurs, the center also facilitates incubation of the business idea and convert it into a feasible concept to develop it and acquire customers.
India and Israel had last year agreed to select startups and provide them opportunity to interact with end users, investors, corporations and other potential partners in both the countries.
There is also a plan to launch the India-Israel Industrial R&D and Technological Innovation Fund that was announced during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Israel in July, 2017.
The India-Israel joint statement noted that both the Prime Ministers during this visit will launch the first ‘Call for Proposals’ under the fund to encourage enterprises from both countries to utilize this significant platform for undertaking joint R&D projects in innovative and futuristic technologies and products.