ICT for Agriculture Technology Dissemination

Mukesh Pandey, Deepali Tewari Pandey & Kamini Bisht

 

 

The main phases of the agriculture industry are crop cultivation, water management, fertilizer application, fertigation, pest management, harvesting, post harvest handling, transporting of food/food products, packaging, food preservation, food processing/value addition, food quality management, food safety, food storage and food marketing.

 

All agricultural extension and farmer-outreach programs face three major challenges viz. ensuring cost-effective outreach, designing solutions tailored to needs of individual farmers and cultivating an image that is farmer-friendly. Large sections of the farming community, particularly the rural folk, do not have access to the huge knowledge base acquired by agricultural universities, extension centers and businesses. However, internet and mobile networks have the potential to provide agro-information services that are affordable, relevant to needs (timely and customized), searchable and up to date.

 

Information Communication Technology can provide vital access to information, markets by connecting the rural poor and marginalized to the world's information resources and opportunities. However, not all persons have access to this information. The inequality in opportunities presented by ICT is widest between urban and rural groups, rich and poor, men and women and the educated and uneducated. Despite this, ICT use in rural areas is increasing, such as the internet and cell phones and the individual, community and national benefits they bring by making information available at the fingertips are forever emerging.

 

Among various initiatives required to improve farm productivity, four critical areas are highly conducive for usage of ICT. IT can help reach the large number of farmers, which otherwise is not possible. The areas where ICT can help are: 

• Farmer Education.
• Back up services
• Commercial Information and
• Help in selling produce

 

By increasing access to better opportunities to the rural farmer the economy gains in terms of better integrated and competitive product markets, the local family amplifies its opportunity for income; and the society gains from the spillover effects of less poverty and more economically and socially productive citizens. For example, research from a 'Village Pay Phone' project in Bangladesh indicates that the introduction of telephones to the village allowed the villagers to eat well all year round compared to only 9.9 months when there were no phones. Benefits such as these become diffused manifold in theeconomy and the society. (Global e-governance readiness report, 2005)

 

Today farmers seem to be more innovative and extension agencies/personnel have become laggards. Extension personnel are unable to creatively respond to the change taking place in the environment and remain duplication and tradition bound (Nagasri, 2000). Farmers need dynamic information relating to agricultural rural development. There is presently a gap between what farm families need by way generic and dynamic information and what the conventional extension agencies are able to provide. Therefore to satisfy the need of farmers and farming communities, Information and Communication Technology would be very effective

 

Queries that an ICT hub can answer: The ICT hub provides answers of various agriculture based queries of farmers and related people as given below:

agriculture based queries of farmers and related people as given below:

How to tackle Pest attack?
Consumer need & preferences
Market linkages
Demand forecasting
Govt. Schemes & Subsidies
Demand & price information
Sources of agri-inputs, packing and credit
Scientific agri-practices
Value- additions
Insurance Schemes
Cold Chain infrastructur

Farmer Education:

 India's average farm productivity in food grains is nearly one third of that of a comparable economy like China. However, this average is a result of widely varying levels of productivity across the country. The highest productivity figures achieved with Indian seeds and package of practices in adequately irrigated lands are comparable to those reached anywhere in the world. Thus, the pressing need is to reduce the spread and pull the average up. Extension services of the government have been resource intensive, limited by the extent of actual coverage, competence, motivational and diligence levels of the individuals and their ability to stay updated with latest developments. If we analyse the difference between the farming practices in developed nations like USA and developing country like India, the biggest difference is in availability of information. The gap between the 'information-rich' farmers of Punjab and 'information poor' farmers of Jharkhand can be bridged by IT. A farmer's need can be divided into three hierarchical levels as follows.

 

Hierarchy of Farmer's needs

IMPROVEMENTAL NEEDS: What are the subsidiary activities I can take up to earn extra income? Which crop rotation to follow for achieving best yields?

BASIC NEEDS: Which crops to sow?, Where to get the seeds from? How to fight different pests?, What are the correct practices to follow?

Agricultural development can be stimulated if all these three needs can be catered to, for which availability of timely, user friendly and accurate information will play a big role.IT can play a major role in updating the farming community by ensuring information flow through agri-websites, enabling the industry to take an updated, uniform database on farming practices to the individual villages, with the data customized to individual agro-climatic zones. This website can be accessed through the Internet at nodes set up in major villages in the local language. Such a movement can also include the channel members as active participants creating a win-win situation.

Backup Services:

 It is not sufficient to provide the farmer exhaustive information through web-portals, his specific queries have to be replied through on-line chats, he has to be provided with early warnings regarding pest onset and weather forecasts for his local areas using remote sensing. Once the web portals attract large number of farmers, lot of new set of industries interested in providing services like sowing, transportation and mechanized farm operations like pest control or harvesting will get created.

Once, direct contact of farmers becomes feasible with the help of IT, another extremely and critically important input i.e. farm credit sector can be handled much easily.

Commercial Information:

Real time information on all the agri-inputs like seeds, and crop protection chemicals, nearest vendors, international sources can be provided. Once the service providers feed farmer with all the information, he can intelligently decide to carry out certain operations on his own or outsource them.

Help in better price realization:

 Most of the small farmers sell their produce to middlemen or in the nearest mandis where the middlemen decide prices. The farmer has virtually no interactions with the taluka nor does he know the prices ruling at nearby markets. By making commodity prices and market information on a real time basis available on the Internet, the farming community can be provided with choices that they lack today. This will ensure better price realization and stimulate a drive towards better productivity.

IT enablement can also enormously benefit farmers who grow cash crops by providing forecasted information on future prices of commodities. This will prevent the tendency of farmers to jump into a decision on the basis of ruling price levels and later on discover that the prices have crashed when they are ready to sell their produce at the end of the season. Information on likely future prices of commodities can avert this disaster to a large extent.

Role of ICT in Decision Support Systems:

Some of the roles that ICT can play in decision support systems are given below:

Stages in agricultural research process		Goal (based on innovation systems)		Contribution of ICTs to achieving (innovation systems goal)		Examples of ICT interventions supporting greater collaboration, communication and knowledge sharing with stakeholders
a. Identifying research priorities		Chosen research to reflect ideas, needs, priorities or stakeholders and situations on the ground		ICTs can provide mechanisms for allowing a wide range of stakeholders to provide opinion and knowledge to support this process		On the forums and platforms can allow for a wider consultation process Online collaboration tools can allow discussions with..... Online tools such as CGMAP-can store relevant information and allow it o be searchable Book on CGIAR research prioritization methods and experiences Many methods for making things explicit......
b. Planning and designing research		Research is designed with inputs from stakeholders		ICTs can provide mechanisms for allowing a wide range of stakeholders to provide opinion and knowledge to support this process		Many web 2.0 tools which can share information and allow for online collaboration in discussing ideas as well as developing documents Story telling Social network analysis
c. Undertaking research (data collection, analysis etc.)		Research is undertaken with contribution from stakeholders		ICTs can provide mechanisms to allow more stakeholders to be involved in research activities		Data storage Learning alliances
d. Producing products from research result		Products are developed with contribution of various knowledge sources and keeping in mind various target groups		ICTs can provide options for getting feedback and collaboration on product development from a wide range of stakeholders		Online tools which allow collaboration in developing products Spatial information and analysis tools
e. Dissemination of research products and messages		Dissemination is done in ways that appropriately target variety of stakeholders		ICTs offer more avenues for sharing of knowledge with stakeholders of different types and with different situations		Mobile phones Radio Web 2.0 tools-websites, blogs, other social media Face-to-face knowledge sharing activities Printed products
f. Monitoring and evaluation		Research process includes mechanisms for learning for learning and contributing to direction and analysis of products: outcomes are decided based on multiple views		ICTs provide ways to involve people in setting goals and outcomes for projects and involving them in the M&E activities. ICTs can create opportunities for wider learning from projects		Participatory M&E methods (e.g. impact pathway, outcomes mapping etc.) Online surveys

 

Some successful ICT applications in Indian agriculture are as follows:

• e-choupal: Indian Tobacco Company (ITC's) International business division is one of India's largest exporters of agricultural commodities has conceived e-choupal has launched in June 2000 as a more efficient supply chain aimed at delivering value to its customers around the world on a sustainable basis. ITC's e-choupal is a unique example of using ITC's for agricultural development; e-choupal has already become the largest initiative among all internet based interventions in rural India. e-Choupal link rural farmers directly for the procurement of agricultural / aquaculture produce like soya, coffee, prawns etc. eliminating the role of the middleman. The principle of the e-Choupals is to inform, empower and compete. There are 6,500 eChoupals today. ITC Limited is adding 7 new e-Choupals a day and plans to scale up to 20,000 eChoupals by 2012 covering 100,000 villages in 15 states, servicing 15 million farmers.

 

• aAQUA.org:  aAQUA-which stands for almost All Questions Answered is a farmer-expert Q&A database supporting Indian languages. It is an online multilingual, multimedia agricultural portal for disseminating information from and to the grassroots of the Indian agricultural community. The technology for Almost All Questions Answered (aAQUA) was developed by Developmental Informatics Lab, KReSIT, IIT B and was sponsored by Media Lab Asia and Development Gateway Foundation's R&D Center. aAQUA simultaneously addresses two major challenges in farmer outreach programs viz  geographic reach and customized delivery. It answers farmers queries based on the location, season, crop and other information provided by farmers. An aAqua question is posted either by a registered user directly or through a telecenter/kiosk operator who has an account in aAqua. Usually the question is from a farmer whose profile information provides details such as crop, farm size, pesticides and fertilizers used, dosage etc. The prices of various commodities along with their varieties are displayed spatially over a map. The user can decide where to sell his produce to get the maximum profit, depending on the prices and the distance of the markets.

 

aAQUA makes use of novel database systems and information retrieval techniques like intelligent caching, offline access with intermittent synchronization, semantic-based search, etc. Agricultural content repositories (Digital Library), Agri-price information (Bhav Puchiye), farmer schemes and various operations- support databases (aAQUA-Q&S) have also emerged from the experience of aAQUA deployments. aAQUA's large scale deployment provides avenues for researchers to contribute in the areas of knowledge management, cross-lingual information retrieval, and providing accessible content for rural populations. Apart from agriculture, aAQUA can be configured and customized for Expert advice over mobile networks and the internet in education, healthcare and other domains of interest to a developing population. aAQUA is being spread geographically by building strategic partnerships with the state governments, kiosk network providers and Agricultural expert organizations. Additional services being considered for aAQUA as part of the scaling up effort include (i) weather reports (ii) database of populous villages and their location information, (iii) quality standards for exports. Apart from Agriculture, aAQUA, Bhav Puchiye and the Digital Library can be configured and customized for expert advice and content in education, healthcare, e-Governance esp. by organizations who are working in connecting laymen with experts.

• Warana Wired Village: In the Warana Wired Village Project covering 70 villages in Maharashtra the existing cooperative structure has been used with state of the art infrastructure to allow Internet access to existing cooperative societies.  The aim is to provide information to villagers by establishing networked booths in the villages. The villages in this sugarcane-growing region have computers that are linked to a central network that provides farmers access to essential pieces of information such as the ideal time for planting and harvesting sugarcane, the current market rates of their produce, and payments made by the factories. The Central and State governments together funded 90 per cent of the project

 

The computer network has put an end to a major reason for anxiety at harvest time. Any delay in harvesting reduces its sugar content and, consequently, weight. Farmers are paid according to the crop's weight. The computer network provides each farmer with a share code. By punching the code into the system, the farmer gets details such as when the crop was planted and when it is due for harvesting. This gives the farmer sufficient time to organise workers to cut and transport the sugarcane.

 

The network also gives details of farmer's transactions with the local sugar and milk cooperatives and helps them compare sugarcane prices in different parts of the country. The computer kiosk has made several tasks easy and less tedious for the sugarcane farmers. For instance, after sugarcane was weighed at the factory it took four days for farmers to know how much money they would get. Now, within two hours of the crop reaching the factory, farmers know how much they will be paid. The computers at the sugar factory's weighbridge feed the crop's weight into the farmer's file through his share code. A receipt is issued to the farmer or the transporter. The farmer can check his payment status at the computer booth.

 

The booths are located at the milk collection centres in the villages. The sugar factory pays Rs.150 every month for the use of the 12 foot x12 foot room that houses the computer. The service is free for farmers. Whenever farmers send sugarcane to the factory they go to the computer booth once in two days to check the prices and the details of his transactions with the cooperative. Farmers trust the system and know they cannot get cheated.

 

High-speed VSATs (very small aperture terminals) connected to the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in Pune and an electronic telephone exchange form the basic technology frame of the wired village project. The VSATs provide Internet access and the electronic telephone exchange provides dial-up facilities to the central hub located at the office of the Warana sugar cooperative. For the network the NIC has developed a software package based on an accounting programme. The programme supports the local language which is essential for the project.

• Infosys' ICT initiatives for empowering Indian farmers: Infosys Technologies has partnered with ACDI/VOCA, a non-profit international development organization that promotes broad-based economic growth, to develop an ICT-enabled application that would improve efficiencies in the agro supply chain in India. The solution successfully minimizes inventory requirements, reduces waste and allows retailers and farmers to be better integrated. This application falls under ACDI/VOCA's Growth-Oriented Microenterprise Development Program (GMED), which is a $6.3 million, USAID-funded initiative. GMED is an innovative program that develops sustainable and scalable approaches to job creation by fostering the growth of micro and small enterprises. Maintaining on-time, programmed delivery of fresh produce from a large and scattered production base is a complex and critical operation. This solution gives the organized retail sector access to a reliable small holder production base. It thereby decreases farm-to-market losses, currently estimated at 30% to 40% on certain products."

 

             The application tackles supply chain management from profiling of farmer clusters to crop planning, scheduling, tracking and forecasting. The application allows farmers to access technical information including database searches for data and images, access to region-specific weather updates and market information, i.e., daily sales volumes and average prices. The application can handle several thousand concurrent users and yet ensures that data is secure through data-encryption mechanisms. There are 1,700 small holder farmers currently integrated into organized retail supply chains through this application, thereby bridging the urban-rural agricultural divide. Over the next five to eight years, the usage is expected to increase to a million farmers. The system is accessible across GPRS and CDMA devices, thereby increasing the effectiveness of the field force. It ensures that there is no loss of data if connectivity or power is lost. The application also gives farmers real-time access to agricultural experts, thereby improving farming technology at an overall level. This technology intervention in the agricultural sector in India will reduce rural poverty in the long run.

 

Infosys has built the solution consisting of wireless software applications that are accessible on handheld devices, enabling agents to address information gaps constraining vegetable and fruit farmers and enabling other supply chain participants to monitor and control the back-end and front-end supply chain functions. The application also enables wholesaler/retailer or other intermediaries to optimize cost by allowing large procurement, efficient transportation management and enabling intelligent crop production management. The solution is built on Infosys TruSync, a context-aware, client-server solution that is designed for situations with limited or no network availability and allows for peer-to-peer (p2p) synchronization between field agents without connecting to a central server.

 

• Metrological Information by Ingen Technologies: Many farmers in Punjab and West Bengal are receiving messages on their cell phones about weather information specific to towns and districts and by 2009 these could be availed by farmers throughout India. Offered by a Kanpur-based company Ingen Technologies, the service updates farmers on temperature, humidity and rainfall with additional parameters such as atmospheric pressure, solar radiation, wind speed and soil moisture. The system is approved and certified by the Indian Meteorological Department.  The company is also offering its services to a major soft drink company, which can better predict demand for its beverages based on these predictions and analytics software. For farmers Ingen provides agro-advisory services that include advice on sowing times, disease outbreaks and frost forecast, through SMS. On other hand, Ingen has designed a decision support tool for utility companies and FMCGs, and have already supplied to some and are in talks with some other players.

• Honey-Bee knowledge network: ICT can help empower the knowledge rich but economically poor people. Under the "Honey-Bee" knowledge network (of the IIM, Ahmedabad) implemented with the support from InfoDev division of World Bank the purpose is to augment grassroots inventors and overcome language, literacy and localism. The project has mobilized those creative and innovative farmers, artisans, mechanics, fishermen and women and labourers who have solved the problems through their own genius without any outside help, whether from state, market, or even NGOs. Such self triggered and developed innovations whether technological or institutional are scouted, supported, sustained and scaled up wherever possible with or without value addition, or linkage with formal science and technology institutions. Idea is to generate incentives and benefits for the innovators and traditional knowledge holders. The objective of this entire exercise was to create a clearing house, so that potential investors, venture capital or angle investors & entrepreneurs can link up with grassroots innovators, thus facilitating a golden triangle of innovation, investment & enterprise and thus build a bridge between formal & informal science.

• ikisan Portal: The Nagarjuna Fertilisers Company Limited (NFCL) is an agribusiness based at Andhra Pradesh. They are disseminating various farming information to the farmers at various places through ICT centers. Ikisan is a comprehensive agri portal addressing the information, knowledge and business requirements of various players in the agri arena such as farmers, trade channel partners and agri input /output companies. ikisan provides online, detailed content on - crops, crop management techniques, fertilisers and pesticides and a host of other agriculture related material. ikisan enable farmers to network with other farmers, suppliers and consumers across the world.

Conclusion:

The Vision 2020 document of the Department of Agriculture and Co-operation envisages that "the tools of ICT will provide networking of Agriculture Sector not only in the country but also globally and the Centre and State Government Departments will have reservoir of databases" and also "bring farmers, researchers, scientists and administrators together". The State's role in achieving ICT revolution becomes crucial if we examine the prospect of a sharply widening digital divide within the economy. Even beginning to provide access to the new technology to the overwhelming majority who cannot access it for technological reasons would impose a large financial burden. But the more difficult task is to prepare the disconnected to develop the competence to participate, however marginally, in the emerging digital economy. With literacy and schooling achievements still at indefensibly low levels, the first task of the government would be to rapidly advance the pathetic reach of literacy and school education in the country. In terms of priority this should be placed above the target of providing a minimum degree of access to ICT those who are completely disconnected. The application of ICT solutions for the development of rural India and other developing countries will surely open up a vast range of possibilities. Giving an opportunity to the vast majority of the population living in rural areas, to cross the digital divide to obtain access to information resources and services provided by ICT is the next revolution waiting to happen. Although this is a development issue, it is just not the government, non-government organizations or the rural masses that have a role to play. Private profit-making institutions can develop solutions to capture the hitherto unrecognized markets, make profits and at the same time aid the rural societies. The new technologies being developed can help surmount barriers present in providing information resources at a low cost and make applications feasible and profitable.

 

References:

 

1. Nagasri, K. (2000). Assess of creative potential and practice of extension personnel. PhD Thesis (Unpublished) IARI Pusa, New Delhi.
2. Global e-governance readiness report. (2005). Retrieved 11^th July 2009,  http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan021888.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

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