Abstract:
Advanced Technologies and Training and Research for Optimizing Agricultural Production.
Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saitama University, Japan.
Humans are inventive; human innovations can be seen throughout timescale, back in the ice age,
or even beyond that period. Humans of this modern-day are very innovative, and future
generations will take further steps towards surpassing their ancestors continuously. Things were
invented and evolved for two main reasons: necessity and curiosity; however, both play together
most of the time. Curiosity is a mix of the desire to explore, investigate, and learn. The demand can
be divided into quantitative and qualitative; quantitative demand comes first, and qualitative
demand becomes second most of the time. Continuous demand and curiosity drive the complexity
and advancement of technologies (literally everything around us). New technologies have been
introduced, leaving older ones obsolete. Eventually, technological adaptations would be continual
and rapid in order to reap the greatest benefit from the most recent technology. This holds true
for all industries, including agriculture.
Technological advancement entails more than just upgrading or applying technologies; relevance
and feasibility must also be addressed. The cost-effectiveness of the approach should also be
examined. As a result, improvements should be carried out with caution and adjusted to minimize
over- or under-utilization. It is necessary to go through a problem-solving cycle in order to identify
acceptable technologies and optimize technological adaption. Developing economies, for the most
part, do not use such approaches to identify efficient technology solutions to specific problems,
most likely due to a lack of research, resources, and knowledge base. Furthermore, the
implementation of imported technologies created to solve the same problem in another country
may fail due to a lack of optimizations. Thus, the enhancement of training and research capacity
of the agricultural sector is an absolute requirement. The capacity should be improved in two
folds: research capability, particularly funding and laboratories with modern equipment, and
human resources with not only knowledge and experience but also enhanced intellectual ability
(difficult part of problem-solving is creative thinking and know-how. Knowledge is conveniently
available).
With an aging population and shrinking land space, a country like Sri Lanka requires advanced
technologies to satisfy future local agricultural demands. Furthermore, as society advances and
pushes toward more advanced technologies, quantitative and qualitative expectations typically
rise. Then, because export agriculture is competitive, profit maximization necessitates fewer
labor-intensive technologies. As a result, the need for aggressive technological adaptation in the
agriculture industry cannot be overlooked. Surprisingly, the human resources required to develop
such technologies can be found within the country. However, the difficulty is that those resources
were not successfully exploited in the agricultural sector. Moreover, agricultural curriculum and
research should be expanded to train human resources with the capability to work conveniently
with techniques such as mechatronics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Those are the
critical skills expected from modern-day agricultural engineers, but the fundamental knowledge
should not be forgotten.