Team Details:
| SHOAIB RASHID SALEEM Assistant Professor/ Director, Center for Precision Agriculture, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi (PI) |
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| MUHAMMAD NAVEED TAHIR Director, Institute of Geoinformation and Earth Observation, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi (Co PI) |
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| ABDUL SABOOR Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi (Co PI) |
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| MUHAMMAD FAISAL ALI Research Fellow Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), Islamabad (Co PI) |
Theme/Relevant Ministry:
BUSINESS, INVESTMENT AND EXPORTS:
Ministry of National Food Security & Research
Project Brief:
Pakistan’s agriculture has been playing vital role as it contributes about 25% in national GDP. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are proving to be fast and effective methods of crop monitoring and agrochemical spraying. However, adoption rates of UAVs in Pakistan are very low, and a comprehensive study is required to determine the limiting factors and identify constraints in adoption of UAVs technologies in Pakistan. A survey-based study is planned in the cotton belt of the Punjab province to identify the willingness of farmers in adopting UAVs in different cropping systems with a special focus on cotton and maize. Farmers and other stakeholders will be requested to participate in this study along with available secondary datasets. Discrete Choice Modelling (Conditional Logit Model to access the impact of product attributes on willingness and Multinomial Logit Model to determine the impact of characteristics of respondent on willingness) will be used in this study. Different statistical techniques will be implemented to analyze the collected data. Also, the study will identify constraints in development of national policy for UAVs adaptation in Pakistan. The findings of this research will help in devising comprehensive strategy to adopt UAVs at large scale and develop national policy to propagate UAVs technologies in Pakistan.
Public Policy Relevance:
The results of the proposed research will help the government in taking concrete steps to establish UAVs manufacturing and services stations in prioritized areas for different cropping systems. The results will also determine need to develop and offer UAVs training and certification programs for various stakeholder especially farmers. The proposed research will also encourage the national institutes to develop and adopt national policy for agricultural UAVs for widescale adoption of this valuable precision agriculture tool.