Kozminski Techblog

For many years, the Indian agriculture has been lagging behind an don’t adapting to changing world and technology. In India, the agriculture sector plays a vital role in the society as it contributes to 18% of Indian GDP and is a primary source of livelihood for around 58% of the country’s population mainly due to large percentage of people living in rural areas. In the era of globalisation and new innovations, Indian tech start-ups became to mushroom especially in the agriculture sector to come up with idea of optimising this branch of the economy, catching up with rest of the world and increasing the efficiency of this farms. They invented drones-helpers who fly above the farm spreading the pesticides hanged below them in a container. It is incredibly efficient as it is affordable, easier accessible than many workers and it takes a third of a time of a human worker to finish the job. The Indian innovators say that this is not the end of their work and that in the future the robots would be able to make crop analysis like crop growth, plant seeds or water the plants.

In a developed country, the agriculture sector should remain a small fraction of the total GDP – most of it should consist of services. People working in the agriculture usually spend their whole lives there and do not contribute to moving the nation’s innovation and progress forward – therefore do not bring any higher change to the nation. If a larger proportion of a society works in this sector it means that many people would not only not contribute much to the society but also that their primary source of income and wellbeing would depend on how much crops would grow or how the job market looks like at the moment. To combat this problem, Indian star-ups came up with idea of using drones as helpers, to help the Indian farmers save the time, maxims profits, allow them to potentially increase their farms due to more time and most importantly to save unnecessary cheap labour used in farm help in watering plants or collecting crops.

But how the drone works? Well, first of all it has to analyse the whole area of a farm to set the boundaries where it should fly – therefore there has to be some visible point as the limits of the farm so the drone don’t get lost. Then, when the data is uploaded to the system and GPS, the drone can began to be autonomous and fly using patterns from the analysis. And lastly through collected data It can 3D map the whole farm and perform a task.

In terms of what the drone can do there are some things for now. Firstly, it can monitor the irrigation. By using thermal, hyper spectral and multispectral sensors it can recognise whether a plant is too dry and then report the status to the farmer. By this the water efficiency can be improved as a farmer would know which crop needs water the most or which crop should one get rid of, as it is dying. As I mentioned before, the drone can see the health of a plant by different scanners. First, it can detect bacterial of fungal plagues in the early stage and the general appearance of a plant that might suggest its poor condition. This might be especially useful for farmers with thousands or hundred thousand plant, as they don’t have time to check every plant. After finding a dying plant, the drone can adapt this knowledge to the database making it more accurate every other time. More importantly, the drone can do agricultural spraying which limits human contact with harmful chemicals to a minimum. As it is stated in the article

– ‘Professionals say that aerial spraying is five times faster with drones when compared to other methods.’

This technology can undoubtedly help not only Indian economy but also the whole agricultural sector as it speeds up work and maximise the efficiency. More people would then have time and resources to increase their education level and therefore to be able to work in many services related jobs, which is an integral part of advanced societies – large GDP proportion consist of services. It would also limit the poverty and increase the wealth of the citizens. The projects could also bring more investors and this prototype could be used by a base by Indian scientist and technicians for more advanced drones that could one day be doctors or builders.

Sources:

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-india-64248510
2. https://vtindia.in/the-benefits-of-drones-in-agriculture/
3. https://www.equinoxsdrones.com/blog/importance-of-drone-technology-in-indian-agriculture-farming
4. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/budget/union-budget-2023-agriculture-sector-needs-fresh-fodder-to-improve-farmer-incomes/articleshow/97458359.cms
5. https://omifoundation.medium.com/til-gdp-versus-jobs-92186a6bbbf6

The world moves toward a cleaner future or at least it seems like it does. Recently, many countries declared to ban on diesel cars as a strategy to combat climate change and as a result of this, motivation to purchase an electric vehicle. Electric vehicles have seen a major rise in demand in recent years and the number is going to skyrocket with the diesel restrictions and strong advertising on ‘greener’ transportation means. Yet, many critics have noticed that the batteries in electric cars are not only short-lasting but need to be replaced after several years which is not only pricey but also creates a waste of raw materials that were used for battery construction. Stora Enso, a Finnish paper mill company, realised that nowadays we use lesser and lesser in our daily life due to digitalisation. They decided to connect the problem of batteries and leftovers of paper production to create a plan of batteries coming from trees, and more directly speaking from the lignin from the paper pulp.

Stora Enso claims to be one of the largest if not the largest private forest company in the world, having many resources needed for paper production. Their idea is to use lignin which is ‘the glue in the trees that kind of glues the cellulose fibres together and also makes the trees very stiff’, as Lauri Lehtonen explains, the main thinker behind the idea of a lignin-based battery solution. Lignin is a polymer which means that it contains carbon which then is a great source for crucial parts in batteries commonly called an anode. Because during the processing of wood, a lot of waste pulp is being created, the Finnish company decided to extract carbon from this pulp to make this significant material for battery anodes and plans with the partnership of a Swedish company they want to already start the production as early as by 2025.

The idea comes from the observations of the world’s market of vehicles where it is expected that the market for batteries in coming years will increase significantly. Moreover, the critics of electric cars often mention the process of extracting lithium which is used to create the batteries for electric cars. Extraction is an industrial process that damages the environment and involves mining. Some of the materials that are within a battery are also toxic, or not recyclable. The positive thing about the batteries coming from trees is that companies declared that they do not wish to cut any new trees or increase the demand for paper manufacturing to get more pulp – they will use what already exists. It is a highly ecological method that provides a green perspective for batteries. In the future, there might be a concern about how strict the regulations are going to be in this sector in terms of cutting new trees, as if this market branch would explode it would automatically increase the demand for waste paper pulp, therefore increasing demand for trees. 

Even though the idea sounds futuristic, the first invention of paper power was discovered in 2007 in the US. Since then, scientists concluded a few points of weaknesses and strengths of such energy mean. First, in the fall, there is environmental influence. The production of paper batteries does not generate any pollution like toxic metal pollutants and the disposal of such batteries is also much more eco-friendly. Secondly, there is no threat of leakage of dangerous chemical substances in a battery as there is none in a paper one. Moreover, they are ultra-thin, flexible, and light which makes them perfect for many devices in every branch of life. More importantly, they can be used in extreme weather ranging from -73 to 143 degrees of Celsius. On the other hand, some sources say that introducing them on a global scale would take 30 to 70 years, therefore it might be slightly too futuristic, yet the Finnish company, mentioned above, might find in the future a more realistic and quicker way of introducing it. 

Bibliography:

1. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221215-the-batteries-made-from-wood
2. https://www.how2shout.com/technology/paper-battery-vs-conventional-battery-difference.html
3. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/paper-battery-future-renewable-energy-snehashis-paul
4. https://usharama.edu.in/blogDetail/paper-battery