Agriculture Winter Batch 2021

ABOUT SHARAD PAWAR INSPIRE FELLOWSHIP

Agriculture sector in India faces many challenges and has both explored and unexplored opportunities to grab with India ranks second worldwide in farm outputs. As per 2018, agriculture employed more than 50% of the Indian work force and contributed 17-18% to the country's GDP. With the rapid onset of climate change, agriculture is facing a multiplicity of challenges namely deteriorating soil health, reducing productivity per acre, extreme floods and droughts etc. This however means that all of the above listed challenges bring with them the opportunity to disrupt the current practices to bring about positive change. To actualize this opportunity the youth of this nation need to be able to grasp, shape and harness the rapidly evolving technological advances in the agriculture and allied sectors. Youth need to be well acquainted with latest technologies in agriculture and allied sectors such as artificial intelligence, internet of things, controlled environment agriculture, genetic improvements in animals etc.

GENESIS

To salute the glorious career of revered Hon. Sharad Pawar Saheb, Yashwantrao Chavan Center is awarding Sharad Pawar Inspire Fellowship in Agriculture' to meritorious Student in the field of Agriculture from the year 2021.

Agriculture, Literature and Education are three areas of fellowship announced this year and the fellows were awarded in an inauguration ceremony which was held recently at Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai on 11th December 2021.

The idea for this fellowship was first mooted by Mrs. Supriya Sule under the guidance of Dr. Anil Kakodkar and Dr. Vivek Sawant, as per the objectives, Innovation & Incubation Centre, ADT took charge of the implementation of 21 Days Bootcamp for this fellowship programme.