Chandigarh, May 21 : Dr. Suresh Kumar Chaudhari, Director General, The Fertiliser Association of India said that India will need to produce more than 400 million tonnes of food grain by 2030 and close to 450 million tonnes by 2047, when the country marks 100 years of independence, making the intelligent use of technology in agriculture and the fertiliser sector no longer optional, but a national priority. He was speaking at the inauguration of FAI’s four-day National Training Programme on ICT for Smart Fertiliser Management at Sterling Resort Kufri, Himachal Pradesh.
Dr. Chaudhari called for a fundamental shift in how the fertiliser industry thinks about its purpose. “Our target is not the farmer, our target is the plant root,” he stated, adding that when the industry orients itself around delivering the right nutrient, in the right quantity, to the right location, at the right time, it opens the door to an entirely new class of innovations in precision nutrition, sensor-based delivery, and specialty fertiliser formulations. He noted that India, with its deep agrarian knowledge base dating back to the Vedic period, is uniquely positioned to lead this conversation globally, pointing to natural farming, organic farming, conservation agriculture, and regenerative agriculture as frameworks that India can offer the world.
On the transformative potential of digital tools, Dr. Chaudhari specifically highlighted blockchain as a technology capable of reshaping the fertiliser sector’s logistics and governance, enabling traceability and transparency from port-of-entry to the farmer’s farm gate. He said that ICT, when applied across the fertiliser value chain from production planning and risk management in plants, to supply chain optimisation, remote sensing, GIS-based soil mapping, satellite imagery, and AI-driven advisory systems can drive meaningful gains in energy efficiency, policy compliance, and agricultural productivity.
The four-day programme at Kufri has been designed to cover the full spectrum of ICT applications in the fertiliser and agriculture sectors, including blockchain for logistics, predictive analytics for supply and demand forecasting, IoT and sensor networks for soil and crop monitoring, precision agriculture, and the role of digital technology in Blue Ocean Strategy. The programme draws participants from across production, supply chain, marketing, finance, and agri-services functions of leading fertiliser and agri-input organisations, with faculty drawn from the industry, ICAR institutes, agri-tech startups, and consultancy organisations.