Karnataka is one of India’s most agriculturally significant states, with a sector that is rapidly transforming through technology, infrastructure investment, and policy-driven modernisation. As agritech, precision farming, and rural entrepreneurship emerge as legitimate career pathways, the conversation around agriculture and graduate employment is changing in ways that demand attention. Shri N. Chaluvarayaswamy, Hon’ble Minister, Department of Agriculture, Government of Karnataka in an exclusive interaction with Kaanchi Chawla & Muskan Jaiswal of Elets News Network (ENN), speaks on what this transformation means for Karnataka’s graduating students and why agriculture deserves a serious place in the campus to career conversation. Edited excerpts:
Agriculture is Karnataka’s largest employment sector yet it rarely features in a campus to career conversation. Why should an educated graduate take agriculture seriously as a career today?
Agriculture in Karnataka today is a technology-driven, innovation-led sector, and the graduate who has not recognised that yet is missing a significant career opportunity.
The sector needs people who understand data, who can work with precision tools, who can manage supply chains and apply technology to solve real problems on the ground. Those are graduate-level skills and agriculture needs them urgently.
Karnataka’s Krishi Mela 2024, organised by Bengaluru Agricultural University, brought together farmers, researchers, and innovators to explore the future of climate-smart and technology-driven agriculture. That is the direction the sector is moving in, and the kind of talent it needs to take it there.
A graduate who looks at agriculture and sees only a traditional sector is not looking at Karnataka’s agriculture. The sector is modernising at a pace that creates real, skilled, well-compensated careers. That conversation belongs at the Campus to Career Summit as much as any other.
Agritech is transforming how food is grown, processed and distributed. What opportunities is Karnataka creating for science and technology graduates at the intersection of agriculture and innovation?
The intersection of agriculture and technology is where some of the most consequential work in this country is going to happen over the next decade. Karnataka intends to be at the centre of that.
A science or technology graduate who wants to build solutions for precision farming, for cold chain logistics, for crop health monitoring, or for agricultural supply chain efficiency will find Karnataka a natural base for that ambition. The state has the agricultural scale, the research institutions, and the policy intent to support that work.
Karnataka’s agricultural universities are not just teaching institutions. They are becoming research and innovation anchors for the sector, connecting academic knowledge to real field problems that technology can solve.
What Karnataka is creating for science and technology graduates is not just a career in agriculture. It is a career in solving agriculture’s most pressing problems through technology, in a state that has made that work a priority.
Karnataka has been investing in agri-infrastructure including harvest hubs and farm mechanisation. How does this modernisation create a different kind of career opportunity for today’s graduates compared to traditional farming?
Karnataka’s investment in agricultural infrastructure is deliberate and it is creating a new category of opportunity for educated youth in the sector.
When we build modern post-harvest facilities, mechanise farming operations, and strengthen the supply chain from field to market, we are not just improving farmer incomes. We are creating professional roles that require skilled, educated people to run them. Equipment management, logistics coordination, quality assurance, procurement, data analysis, these are jobs that come with infrastructure, and they are jobs that graduates are equipped to do.
The graduate entering agriculture today does not enter as a farmer in the traditional sense. They enter as a professional managing the systems that make farming more productive and more profitable. That is a career with structure, with growth, and with purpose.
Karnataka is building that infrastructure and in doing so, building the careers that come with it. Our graduates should see this modernisation not as something that happened to agriculture, but as something that opened a door for them in it.
Rural entrepreneurship and agri-startups are emerging as viable pathways for graduates. What is Karnataka doing to support young people who want to build businesses rooted in agriculture?
A young person who wants to build a business in agriculture is solving one of the most important problems in this country. Karnataka’s job is to make sure they do not have to do it alone.
The agriculture sector in Karnataka offers a scale of raw material, market access, and real-world problems that no other sector can match. A graduate who builds a solution for post-harvest storage, for farmer market access, for agri-input delivery, or for rural logistics is not starting a small local business. They are building something with genuine national relevance.
The Department of Agriculture works in close coordination with Karnataka’s broader startup ecosystem to ensure that agri-entrepreneurs have access to the same infrastructure, mentorship, and policy support available to any other startup in the state. Agriculture cannot remain outside that ecosystem. Its problems are complex, its stakes are high, and the solutions it needs are entrepreneurial.
What we want Karnataka’s graduates to understand is that building a business in agriculture is not a compromise. It is an ambition. And this government will back that ambition.
What is the latest move taken by the department of agriculture under your leadership to ensure income security to farmers ?
The department has been focussing on production technologies but now there has been a paradigm shift from production to agriculture beyond production . The focus is on secondary agriculture , digital agriculture , technology driven agriculture , precision farming , organic farming . The aggregation, processing, value addition , packaging, branding , marketing and export of agricultural commodities along with use of modern technologies like mechatronics , robotics, AI , AIML , Drone technology etc are given priority to enhance the income of the farmers . This C2C summit will bring exposure to agricultural graduates and post graduates an unique opportunity to interact with national and global leaders in science and technology. I thank the department of Higher Education and Elets Technomedia for organizing this event in Bengaluru .
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The Campus to Career Summit brings together government, industry and academia. What is the message the Department of Agriculture brings to this platform for Karnataka’s graduating students?
Karnataka feeds millions of people. It sustains rural economies, drives exports, and connects every part of the state’s growth story to the ground beneath it. That is not a sector on the margins. That is a sector at the foundation of everything.
For too long, agriculture was seen as a career of last resort — something you chose when other options were not available. That perception no longer reflects the reality of what agriculture in Karnataka has become. It is a sector that needs technologists, entrepreneurs, managers, researchers, and policymakers. It is a sector where an educated, motivated graduate can build a career that is meaningful, rewarding, and consequential.
The Department of Agriculture brings to this platform a commitment that Karnataka’s students will leave this conversation with a fuller picture of what their careers can look like. Agriculture is not a sector asking for recognition. It is a sector ready to offer opportunity, and the Campus to Career Summit is where that offer is made directly to the people who should hear it most.
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