e-Agriculture : February 2009 Issue by i4d magazine

Vol. VII No. 2

February 2009

The first monthly magazine on ICT4D

Bringing development practitioners together Knowledge management for food and nutrition security, Solution Exchange, India Information for development

w w w. i 4 d o n l i n e . n e t

Agricultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s response to global food crisis eAdvocacy and mobile communities

e-Krishi in Kerala

ISSN 0972 - 804X

e-Agriculture

Kerala State IT Mission

knowledge for change

Contents

Vol. VII No. 2

February 2009

Mail box

Features 5

Editorial

Knowledge management for food and nutrition security, Solution Exchange, India

When ICT projects emphasise on improving farmers’ lives

Livestocks and poultry sector, Madras Veterinary College, Chennai, India Livestock informatics M Murugan

Bringing development practitioners together Gopi Ghosh and Raj Ganguly

eAdvocacy and mobile communities

mKRISHITM, TCS, India mKRISHITM based grape farming Arun K Pande and Subhash Arve

Agriculture response to global food crisis Alexander G Flor

National Academy of Agriculture Research Management (NAARM), Hyderabad, India

Kerala State IT Mission, India

IT Management in agriculture D S K Rao

National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), New Delhi, India NAIP’s e-Agriculture initiatives N T Yaduraju, R C Agrawal and Himanshu

e-Krishi in Kerala Ajay Kumar

Countrywise Communication, United Kingdom Low-cost video content locally produced Phil Malone

Village information centres in Tamil Nadu, TANUVAS, Chennai, India e-Empowering resource poor farmers F R Sheriff

Columns 42 45 46

Bytes for All

In Fact Institutional credit in Indian agriculture

Knowledge resources

31 Global 44 India

Nokia Life Tools, Nokia, India

e-Auction System, TCS, India e-Auction of small cardamom Tanmoy Chakrabarty

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Print edition The past issues of the magazine are available online www.i4d.csdms.in/archive/archive.htm

New! Knowledge bank

4-6 August 2009 New Delhi, India www.eINDIA.net.in

I have been reading the i4d magazine from the last couple of months. The content and themes of the magazine is quite impressive. The Thematic Features in the magazine is the best section in the magazine. The layout and design of the magazine is also good. In the upcoming issues of the magazine I would like that magazine should cover topics related to micro-insurance and use of ICT by government and businesses. Pallavi Verma Assistant Manager, Rural BPO & Public Relations Drishtee, Noida pallavi.v@drishtee.in

What’s on

Social networking for.... farmers!!! Sapna A Narula

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of books on ICT4d www.i4d.csdms.in/floss/introduction.asp

I would like to acknowledge with thanks the regular receipt of your excellent publication. I would be grateful to continue to receive it. Let me congratulate all the staff on the high quality and relevance of the articles featured therein. Mariana Patru Programme Specialist in ICTs and ODL Division of Higher Education UNESCO, France m.patru@unesco.org Thank you for regularly sending the i4d magazine. It is quite a good source of information for decision making and to follow up on the developments in the field of ICT4D in the region. Angelo Juan O Ramos MD, MPH, Executive Director Molave Development Foundation Inc., Philippines ajoramos@molave.org

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i4d Editorial Calendar 2009 Month

Theme

January

Rural BPOs

Feburary

e-Agriculture

March

ICT in Climate Change

April

ePanchayat

May

Mobiles for Development

June

Social Entrepreneurship i4d | February 2009

Editorial When ICT projects emphasise on improving farmersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lives Advisory Board M P Narayanan, Chairman, i4d Chin Saik Yoon Southbound Publications, Malaysia Karl Harmsen United Nations University Kenneth Keniston Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Nagy Hanna e-Leadership Academy, University of Maryland, USA Richard Fuchs IDRC, Singapore Walter Fust Global Humanitarian Forum, Switzerland Wijayananda Jayaweera UNESCO, France EDITORIAL BOARD Akhtar Badshah, Frederick Noronha

Agriculture will continue to be a key instrument for livelihoods generation for majority of the population in the developing countries, and the current economic meltdown all the more emphasises the need to address the issue of sustainable development and poverty reduction. Unless this is done, we will neither be able to fulfill the commitment made by the signatory countries of the Millennium Development Goals wherein it has been committed to make all efforts to reduce extreme hunger by half by the year 2015. If we have to do this, we have to put agriculture at the centrestage of all development agenda. What can be the role of ICTs? Not only to provide tools and valuable cropping and management information, but also very crucial linkages with experts support as and when farmers require them. The need to be informed of the opportunities available for getting timely information regarding weather, disease management and control measures, epidemics and threats, etc remain central to the agricultural information and extension activities.

GROUP DIRECTORS Maneesh Prasad, Sanjay Kumar EDITORIAL TEAM Editor-in-Chief Ravi Gupta Programme Co-ordinator Jayalakshmi Chittoor Sr. Research Associates Ritu Srivastava Research Assistant Subir Dey Sr. Graphic Designer Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Graphic Designers Om Prakash Thakur, Shyam Kishore,

Currently, the interest is to create delivery means that are suitable and in a way that is accessible to the farmers, for example, by the effective use of mobiles for end-delivery of information modules. Other dynamic portals have been created to use intelligent computing to interface between the farmerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs and queries and the responses of the experts, thus building an effective databank. Such innovative initiatives will come to a naught, unless there are clear strategies for outreach and use by the small and marginal farmers, and delivered in local languages. Current research trends indicate efforts in this direction.

Chandrakesh Bihari Lal (James) Web Programmer Zia Salahuddin i4d G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA, UP, 201 301, India Phone +91 120 250 2181-85 Fax +91 120 250 0060 Email info@i4donline.net Web www.i4donline.net Printed at R P Printers, Noida, India i4d is a monthly publication. It is intended for those interested and involved in the use of Information and Commnication Technologies for development of underserved communities. It is hoped that it will serve to foster a growing network by keeping the community up to date on many activities in this wide and exciting field. i4d does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors. i4d is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided.

Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, 2008

The most important aspect of the role of ICTs is to help the farmers with timely market and financial linkages and opportunities. Efforts have been made not only by governments, but also by agricultural institutions and by leading NGOs and international development agencies. Ever since i4d began in May 2003 to examine the way information and communications technologies have impacted the lives of the communities, we have paid specific attention to look at the opportunities created to use them for improving the lives of the ryots in many issues, including special issues dedicated to this topic. We have covered a number of innovative initiatives of the application of ICT in Agriculture through out the period of the last six years. In this issue of i4d, we bring to our readers a landscape analysis of the progress on e-Agriculture, and hope that we can continue to advocate for more direct engagement of the technology solution providers and researchers to fill the ICT needs of the farmers.

Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

i4d is supported by:

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in

February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FOR FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY, SOLUTION EXCHANGE, INDIA

Bringing development practitioners together

www.fao.org

This article highlights the challenges facing the country on its path to Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) and offers a solution in the form of the UN’s CoP on FNS as part of the Solution Exchange initiative

Gopi Ghosh Assistant Country Representative Food and Agriculture Organisation, India gopi.ghosh@fao.org

Raj Ganguly Agriculture Specialist Food and Agriculture Organisation, India raj.ganguly@fao.org

The development challenges of India, with the world’s second largest population and rich socio-cultural diversity is huge. Although the rapid economic development has seen India cruising through the outreach five of G8 summit, the complex poverty-hunger situation and growing regional economic disparity drags its growth momentum. ‘The average Indian’s income in 2007-08 has nearly doubled since the turn of the millennium’. However, despite rapid economic growth, the number of hungry people increased by over 20 million to reach 231 million in India (report by Committee on World Food Security, FAO, September 2008). Hunger and malnutrition situation in India is still pathetic. According to NFHS survey (2005-2006), a whooping 47% of India’s children are underweight, 30% of newborns are low birth rate, 79% of children of age 6-35 months are anaemic, 56% of married women are anaemic, while infant mortality hovers at 57 per 1000. Although India has successfully continued to achieve food security at national level, with food grain production touching new high of 227.32 million tonnes in 2007-08, Indian agriculture remains miles away from desired production efficiency and competitiveness. The high work force dependency on agriculture (52.1% in 2004-05), rising pressure on land due to shrinking holding size and diversion of land for non–farm usage, wide variation of agriculture productivity across the states, low commercialization and insufficient market interventions etc., together with vulnerability to natural disasters continues to be critical bottlenecks of Indian agriculture. The real challenge for the development practitioners remains to sustain the food production levels taking into account the incremental population pressure, dietary changes due to socio-

economic development and increased risks due to climate change and related factors, apart from the foremost challenge of ensuring food and nutrition security at household level. Also, the growing disparity in income levels is creating new challenges of food accessibility both in urban and rural areas, in the name of ‘nutritional security’. Poverty has been the root cause of hunger and malnutrition. Lack of livelihood access, economic opportunities, resource ownership, information and skills, social discrimination, environmental uncertainties are some of the immediate causes of household food insecurity. Further, inadequate ‘food nutrition education’ and awareness often result in malnutrition or over-nutrition in different socio-economic situations. With about 456 million people living below poverty line, according to a World Bank estimate in 2005, the task of securing food and nutrition security at household level is gigantic for India.

Knowledge management for food and nutrition security Government of India has already taken policy initiatives towards poverty alleviation, integrated rural development, nutrition security and augmenting agriculture development. India has also a very robust agriculture and nutrition education, research and extension system. The NGO’s, research foundations and private sector have taken significant and impressive initiatives towards pro-poor livelihood, agriculture development, nutrition security, and poverty reduction. However, despite having vibrant economy, the large pool of technical and scientific manpower and vast infrastructure to deliver the public good, the crippling food and i4d | February 2009

nutrition situation cannot be ascribed to any other reason except for the ‘lack of focus’ and failure to engage combined resources and wisdom of development stakeholders. Differing socio-cultural background, linguistic barriers, geographical remoteness and differential incentives to work for public good make it further challenging. Significant gap between research priorities, lack of cross-disciplinary perspective and approach, lack of convergence, coordination and networking, multiplicity of institutions, bureaucracy, etc., are also some systemic issues hampering the quicker results. Experts mostly talk to each other in seminars and workshops, but ‘sharing knowledge’ is almost like an alien culture. Farming and the science of nutrition are both knowledge intensive and practice oriented. Established, traditional, tacit or experiential knowledge often assumes significance, at par with scientific knowledge. In this era of rapid change and globalisation, generation, adaptation, diffusion and application of knowledge needs to happen at local level for deeper, faster and sustainable impacts. The powerful role that information and communication technology (ICT) could play to ensure developmental effectiveness, by breaking the barriers of geographical remoteness, institutional exclusivities and individual capacities thus bringing in all the stakeholders - Government, private, research/academia, development agencies and NGO’s, - on an impartial, democratic and universally acceptable platform. The culture of consultation and thinking together, throughout the entire chain of development stakeholders, from process of policy formulation to programme implementation is thus crucial to explore common solutions and understanding, through leveraging practitioner’s knowledge and experience, helping outreach, and promoting inclusivity and cross-disciplinary perspectives.

Solution Exchange for the food and nutrition security community United Nations agencies in India identified ‘Knowledge Management’ as one of the new ways for inching closer to MDG February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

goals and thus the idea of Solution Exchange (www.solutionexchange-un.net.in) was born, to find its niche in the development canvas of India. UN decided to serve as a catalyst in the development process and Solution Exchange envisioned to play a facilitative role, offering a free, impartial space to all development professionals, to help improve development effectiveness in support of attaining India’s Five Year Plans. Development practitioners were brought together by forming Communities of Practice (CoP) where members share their concerns and interests voluntarily, through electronic moderated e-mail groups producing tangible knowledge products at the end. Each CoP is managed by a ‘Resource Team’ comprising of a Resource Person and a Research Associate who work within different UN Agencies as Community ‘Facilitator’. Eleven Communities of Practice (CoP’s) around MDG goals have so far been launched in Solution Exchange. The Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) Community, formed under the aegis of the MDG goal to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, Food and Agriculture Organisation, India, took the lead role in anchoring the Food and Nutrition Community of Solution Exchange. The first task was to act as a bridge between two distinctly segregated segments - Food and Nutrition. With Nutrition Foundation of India as co-facilitators, the foundation of FNS community was strengthened on Nutrition sector as well. With the initial hiccups in getting sign ups for membership, raising ‘query’ and sensitising the members to get into a culture of ‘sharing knowledge’. Members were initially hesitant: typical resistance, inhibition, lack of confidence, unwillingness to write, unsure of what to write or how to write, etc. Talking to people to get them on board with a new and different cultural mindset of sharing, focussing and finding solutions for their daily problems albeit not an academic or a hypothetical one, was not easy. At times the issue of fee expectation, copyrights for contribution, etc. from the members were quite challenging and acted as potential barrier for sharing knowledge. With a lot of facilitation, convincing and initial hand holding support in framing the queries and responses, separating ‘opinions’ from ‘experiences’ or ‘examples’ or ‘ideas’, the culture of consultation and thinking together started taking shape. Members started pouring in their queries, uniquely attempting to find solutions to their practical problems, seeking opinions, advice, and experiences. Urging the members to adopt a focused collaboration transferring whatever they know as best practices and lessons learnt, and share it with others - specially those who are not “so well connected” - and in this process help them create a new knowledge base with cross-disciplinary perspectives, was cautiously attempted. Often the members were seen locking horns with each other - typical ‘Argumentative Indians’, or sometimes ‘When I was in Honolulu’ - talking about themselves and their grand accomplishments barely touching the issue at hand. The responses to queries, e-consultation and e-discussions by the members were studied thoroughly and synthesised by the

resource team to develop ‘Consolidated Replies’, a comprehensive document with tacit, traditional and established knowledge, not only offering the consolidated views of the participant members but also giving well-researched resources as links for future references. Since 2005, the community has grown dramatically over its three years of existence. Currently, the community has a membership base of nearly 2300 and it has about 130 consolidated replies published as knowledge products to its credit. With ever increasing membership from across the various states of India, and having discussed wide range of issues from sustainable food production, food quality and safety, climate change, food supplement programmes, to many critical issues involving policy deliberations, the FNS community has made a significant mark among the development practitioners in India. Some of the major discussions in the community have been on National Farmers Policy, National Agriculture Innovation Project, Assam Dairy Policy, Nutrition Policy, Fishery Policy, Cooked versus packed food in supplementary food scheme, Public Distribution System, Iodine Deficiency Disorders, MDM (Mid Day Meal Scheme) and ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) programmes, breast feeding, etc. Cross cutting issues like gender, HIV and livelihood, often neglected issues like those concerning tribals, and contemporary issues like use of remote sensing/ICT in Agriculture, etc., were also some of the mainstream topics of discussion in the community. The consolidated replies of these discussions have been widely used as reference documents and often cited in national and international journals. Another milestone of the community has been the action group on introduction of vegetables in Mid Day Meal scheme of Government of New Delhi. The work of FNS community transcends social, cultural and geographical boundaries. Its a unique learning experience - very positive, focused, demand driven and inclusive. Its neutrality, utility and impact have been appreciated by the Government as well as the Civil Society. Overcoming cultural obstacles, creating awareness in knowledge sharing and building an open, facilitating environment are our other major accomplishments. It has provided a two-way process of experience sharing, collaborative learning

and looking at development under diverse perspectives. Many discussions have significant contributed to programme implementation and also contributed to the policy debate. It has enabled listening to and bringing up local issues and perspectives, hitherto remained unheard and unrecognised. Another key achievement has been the taking up of development practitioners on board - with the cultural mindset of sharing, focussing and finding solutions for their problems and helping to create a practical knowledge base with crossdisciplinary perspective. But a lot needs to be done, ideally in the shortest possible timeframe, to make India ‘Hunger Free’. And the challenges are daunting to help India sustain food security not only at national level but to achieve food and nutrition security at household level. So the question is how to broaden and deepen the reach of FNS community - bringing in people who need knowledge, as also identifying the ones where such knowledge rests. The cultural barrier of knowledge sharing has been overcome, next challenges are to overcome the barriers of language, literacy, e-literacy and the barriers of access to communication infrastructure i.e., power, telephony, Internet, etc.

Cornell helps develop robotic tractor and sprayer Researchers at Cornell’s New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (NYSAES) are trying to create robotic tractors and sprayers that do not require human operators. Andrew Landers, a pesticide application engineer at NYSAES is one of the researchers in the $3.9 million U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded project to develop, test and evaluate a fleet of autonomous tractors designed for precision agriculture applications. The project called, ‘Integrated Automation for Sustainable Specialty Crop Farming’, is in collaboration with the National Robotics Engineering Centre (NREC) at Carnegie Mellon University. Researchers from Cornell are developing an automatic sprayer that recognises a target - in this case canopy volume and adjusts air and liquid deposition of chemicals accordingly. NREC will focus on developing the tractor. The projects aims to develop tree-level precision agriculture applications that leverage, at very low cost, autonomous mobile platforms and supporting infrastructure; reducing the cost for wide-scale adoption; and soliciting feedback from growers, regulators and technology suppliers. The researchers will also study such questions as how disease detection, yield estimation and precision spraying can be most effectively deployed from the mobile platform; how many platforms one operator can safely monitor and what installation, setup and support issues are associated with the system. i4d | February 2009

eADVOCACY AND MOBILE COMMUNITIES

Agriculture’s response to global food crisis The author suggests how the current online knowledge sharing CoPs can move from computers to mobile phones which are now increasingly becoming as fast as computers and at the same time being more ubiquitous and cost-effective

Dr Alexander G Flor Professor and Dean Faculty of Information and Communication Studies University of the Philippines (Open University) aflor@upou.edu.ph

Introduction Planning experts and economists have warned that the world is about to be confronted with a global food crisis unlike anything it has encountered before. Unbridled population increase combined with longer life expectancies, land conversion, biofuel production and a shrinking agriculture sector exacerbated by rising oil prices and climate change may lead to food shortages and spiraling food prices at a global scale. Within this milieu, e-Agriculture and its emphasis on information and communication technologies and applications in the agricultural sector have been perceived as irrelevant. Not many are aware that the answer to the impending global food crisis may be found in e-Agriculture. Indeed, one may argue that e-Agriculture has very little to do with the factors that are causing the surge in food prices that experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) have identified: • Poor harvests in major producing countries linked to extreme weather events • Decline of food stocks, which are at the lowest level since the 1970s • High oil and energy prices raising the cost of inputs like fertilizers and irrigation as well as the cost of transport of inputs and produce • Lack of investment in the agricultural sector • Subsidised production of bio-fuels that substitute food production • Speculative transactions that hedge futures markets • Imposition of export restrictions leading to hoarding and panic buying. And yet if we examine these factors, most

of them may be addressed by information and communication. We live in a global information society characterised by information-based economies where information is the primary commodity and the critical resource. It is axiomatic that an impending global food crisis can be solved by information. This crisis is a product of social entropy or societal breakdown. Cybernetics and general systems theory teaches us that entropy can be negated by information. It is therefore through the process of information exchange that the world may find its salvation. However, these may seem as empty theoretical constructs to a person with an empty stomach.

eAdvocacy The G8 2008 Hokkaido Conference underscored the importance of access to and dissemination of agricultural technology information in addressing the food crisis. However, we espouse a more proactive response that goes beyond access provision and dissemination for Asia’s e-Agriculture community to address the global food crisis. The e-Agriculture community employs Communities of Practice (CoPs) to generate solutions to agricultural problems. Traditionally, Communities of Practice engage in information exchange, what has been quoted often enough as “the sharing and reuse of information.” This approach is patterned after the corporate KM Model of Davenport et al (1995). Unfortunately, it ends there. The failure of this approach when applied to large-scale societal crisis stems from the fact that it stops short from mobilising sectors and does not go beyond information and knowledge sharing. There are, of course, exceptions within the e-Agriculture community such as Solutions Exchange India, but by and large, CoPs i4d | February 2009

of their sweet potato to get enough money to buy one kilo of rice. CoCs should push sweet potato, cassava and soybeans as alternative staples. Most of all, the advocacies of e-Agriculture CoCs must involve the participation of mobile communities at the grassroots level.

Mobile communities

should live up to its name by engaging in practice. CoPs should disseminate information to correct unsound policies (e.g., land conversion), uninformed decisions (e.g., biofuel production), unwarranted practices (e.g., using staples as animal feed), and inaccurate predictions and forecasts, all of which are part of the entropy that is causing spiraling food prices and artificial food shortages. In other words, CoPs should engage in advocacy.

Bringing CoPs to the next level: Communities of Champions (CoCs) We should note that the CoP concept was a progression from the CoIs or Communities of Interest that characterised the early Internet workgroups that essentially shared notes, information and insights on common areas of interest, beginning with CERN physics and Internet protocols. When CoIs began solving common problems, this brought the workgroup concept to the next level, the CoP. However, many of today’s CoPs offer solutions to problems but stop short of implementing these solutions, preferring to adopt the KM business protocol of sharing and reuse. The problems that confront e-Agriculture nowadays are to a scale that often requires policy interventions, not technological solutions. We have fully dealt out the technological card by engaging into GMO research and precision agriculture. CoPs must now delve into the policy process and progress into Communities of Champions or CoCs. Thus, from CoIs that share information and CoPs that share solutions, e-Agriculture must move into CoCs that mobilize sectors through information, knowledge and advocacy.

The four alternative Fs A potential advocacy theme for e-Agriculture CoCs would be the four Alternative Fs: alternative fuels; alternative fertilizers; alternative feeds; and alternative foods. Under alternative fuels, CoCs should push jathropa as a source of biofuels instead of corn, sugarcane, palm oil and coconut oil. Under alternative fertilizers, the organic initiative should be resurrected against petroleumbased fertilizers. Under alternative feeds, CoCs should prod animal nutritionists to consider alternatives to corn and soybean as feed for livestock and poultry considering it takes a hundred kilos of soybeans to produce one kilo of beef. Under alternative foods, upland families in Kalimantan, Indonesia sell 10 kilos

Fearless forecasts: In the 2008 IAALD Conference held in Atsugi, Japan, the e-Agriculture keynote panel, which included this writer, made seven forecasts on the future of e-Agriculture, all revolving around mobile telephony: 1. Mobile phones will make telecentres or community eCentres redundant and the OLPC initiative irrelevant 2. Mobile service providers will or are already solving the first mile/last mile linkage challenge 3. Mobile phone users in agricultural communities will or have already reached a critical mass 4. Mobile phone functionalities will lead to collaboration and networking and will render intermediaries unnecessary 5. Mobile phone content will efficiently address issues such as the language medium, auto-translations, relevance and the lack of local knowledge. 6. Mobile phone handsets will make ICT services affordable to agricultural communities 7. Mobile phone applications will provide the e-Agriculture community with an effective Web2.0 platform. Web2.0 has revolutionised how people think of the World Wide Web from a collection of individually owned static websites with published content into a body of collectively owned dynamic websites with user generated content. The 3G mobile phone, in general, and the iPhone 3G, in particular, a most disruptive tool, has given e-Agriculture, the much needed platform for Web2.0. A lot of these have to do with the mobile phone itself. Mobile phones are no longer phones but are mobile workstations, and more. As early as 2005, Nokia began fining employees in Finland who referred to the Nokia 9300 as a phone, not as a computer.

The five Cs For the past decade, we in the e-Agriculture sub sector have been confronted by the following challenges, the Five Cs: • Carriage: There are no first-mile/last-mile linkages. • Critical Mass: ICT use in the rural areas has not reached the numbers required to make an impact on agriculture productivity and poverty alleviation. • Collaboration: Intermediaries only make partnerships and collaboration possible. Generally, farmers, housewives and rural youth do not use ICTs without the intervention of line agencies that provide basic services. This is otherwise known as Calvano’s Missing Link hypothesis • Content: There is a lack of local content. There cannot be a universally accepted medium. • Cost: Rural communities cannot afford ICT hardware and services Carriage: In one sweep, Apple’s iPhone has potentially addressed all of these problems. With the current infrastructure of cellular sites in agricultural countries, the mobile phone has solved the first mile/last mile challenge. Even the need for telecentres, i4d | February 2009

agricultural ATMs or kiosks has vanished. The OLPC has likewise been made redundant. Consider a household with an iPhone. The husband would regard it as a source of information. The wife would consider it as a medium of communication. The college student would use it as a mobile library. The adolescent sees it as an iPod wherein audio and video podcasts may be downloaded and played back. The youngest in the household would regard it as a PSP or a Playstation Portable. A professional can use the iPhone as a handheld Mac or a mobile office. A field worker can employ it as a documentation tool capturing images and audio. The iPhone can produce user-generated, local content from documents to rich media that may be shared and reused among farming communities. It can certainly do more than what a telecentre can do. It is not the intention of this paper to promote an Apple product. As a matter of fact, if Apple does not play its cards right and continues to disenfranchise those in the lower economic brackets then in a few years we might just find ourselves with perfectly operational iPhone clones running on open access/open source software. Critical Mass: In the Philippines, cellular phone ownership achieved a critical mass in 1998 with the advent of 2G or GSM technology. The exchange of text messages translated into a mutually reinforcing behavior among social networks. Now, almost everybody owns a mobile phone. The only exceptions are the very young, the very old and the very poor. Ownership transcends across economic classes (except for the very poor), gender, age and sector. Latest figures reveal that four hundred million SMS messages are sent and received in the Philippines everyday. That translates to ten million dollars a day spent on SMS alone, excluding voice calls, GPRS and 3G services.

Collaboration: The mobile phone prompts the farmer, housewife and rural youth to collaborate, to share and reuse, to exchange information. Zazueta (2008) observes even residential students prefer online learning if they had a choice. 45 percent cost reduction with no significant difference in learning. Apple’s MobileMe social networking platform costs US$99 per year. Content: Given the current mobile phone ownership in rural and remote areas of agricultural countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Malawi, and Lao PDR, iPhone has the potential of bringing local content up on the Web, in audio/video. As Metcalf argues, video is the next big thing in the Internet. This makes the issue of a universally accepted medium, moot and academic. Web communities will use their language of choice effectively through video. With current incentives for developers, we might find a complete suite of e-Agriculture applications for the iPhone within the next three years. Cost: As to cost, the iPhone retails at 200 US dollars and one can purchase a prepaid card for as low as US$1. Technology is getting better, cheaper, faster and smaller. The bulky Motorola bricks that were introduced as cellular handsets retailed at US$4000 in the early eighties. Signing up for a connection entailed another US$4000. Compare the Motorola brick with your mobile phone today. It is obvious that technology is getter better and cheaper by the day.

Conclusion With the aforementioned argument, it appears that the future of e-Agriculture lies in eAdvocacy, mobile devices and online mobile communities. With this in mind, we would be better equipped to face the global food crisis.

NABARD to help hold rural haats The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is planning to expand its scope as development bank. In order to promote self employment and to boost industrialisation in rural areas of Orissa, NABARD will extend its assistance in setting up ‘haats’ or rural weekly markets. The bank will provide a financial assistance of upto INR 5 lakh for development of infrastructure facilities at

rural haats. In the first phase of the project, NABARD will assist five gram panchayats in each of the 314 blocks in the in the state. According to M K Mudgal, Regional Officer of NABARD, two such projects have already been sanctioned in Koraput district. The bank will also fund the setting up of markets to sell local agricultural products like flowers. i4d | February 2009

KERALA STATE IT MISSION (KSITM), INDIA

e-Krishi in Kerala e-Krishi, an initiative of KSITM helps to bring buyers and sellers and tries to do away with or in the least reduce the number of intermediaries. The project enables them and other stakeholders to interact with the agriculture service providers in the private, government and non-governmental sector

ICTs in Agriculture We are living in a world where all spheres, including those most resistant to change, cannot escape getting influenced by the developments in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The initial scepticism over how ICTs can contribute to the matters related to soil, water, crops and farming, has been swept away with the many IT-enabled agricultural projects getting increasingly adopted all over the world. India also witnessed its own innovations in the use of ICTs in the agriculture sector, with projects like e-Choupal having achieved international fame. Agriculture forms the most important segment of Keralaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy. Therefore, Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM) initiated steps to explore the possibilities regarding the use of ICTs in the sector. The efforts assumed even greater relevance in the wake of challenges the agriculture sector has faced with globalisation and liberalised trade regime. This led to developing the e-Krishi project in Kerala.

e-Krishi project Farmers in rural areas typically get low price for their products because of limited number of buyers and sellers, geographical and temporal barriers, and lack of price information. Each of these limitations

Ajay Kumar Secretary (Information Technology) and Chairman, KSITM Government of Kerala kumarajay1111@gmail.com

e-Krishi state level workshop February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

www.e-krishi.org

give rise to several layers of intermediaries who exploit the system and take away a disproportionately large share of the profits without providing commensurate value addition. With the objective of reorienting the internal agricultural marketing system, KSITM conceived the e-Krishi project, which helps to bring together the buyers and sellers and tries to do away with or at least reduce the number of intermediaries. Apart from helping the farmers to market their agri products, the project enables them and other stakeholders to interact with the agriculture service providers in the private, government and nongovernmental sector. e-Krishi is a market-driven Agricultural Initiative through IT enabled Agri Business Centres in Kerala State. It aims to address the existing gap in agriculture information flow and transaction management. It aims to facilitate interaction between farmers and other stakeholders with agricultural service providers in the private, government and non government sectors through Agri Business Centres. Akshaya centres, which were introduced to popularise eliteracy and have since become centres for delivery of various citizen services, act as agribusiness centres in this project. The selection of Akshaya as the agribusiness centre was appropriate as at least two centres are present in each village and each centre reaches out to 1200-1500 families. W h i l e p r ov i d i n g intensive spatial reach for the project, it also helps in making the Akshaya centres sustainable. The network of Agri Business Centres is driven by a state level resource cell and district level implementation cell.

Web-based platforms are used in creating a virtual services gateway for all the participating members. e-Krishi creates a network of farmer community which has access to information on market demand, prices, good agricultural practices and quality agricultural inputs. This is achieved through a technology-enabled robust transaction platform that facilitates all their offline activities. e-Krishi provides a facility for the farmers to post their queries which will be answered by experts. If one posts the details of the soil and the crop that s/he intends to cultivate, s/he will get an advice on the type of fertilizer that can be used. Likewise, details on planting materials pesticides etc can be availed through this programme. Weather and crop information is also provided. It also creates a platform for the farmers to interact with agriculture equipment suppliers, experts, agri-buyers, exporters and self-help groups. Other stakeholders - banks, government offfices, agriculture institution, NGOs, etc. - too use the platform of e-Krishi in order to enable the farmers reap the benefits of Information Technology.

Goals and objectives The salient objectives of the initiative include: i. Aggregation of responsive farmer community of about 100,000 with a cumulative farm land of 100,000 hectares cultivating priority crops as determined by the market demand ii. Enrollment of buyers in key markets including manufacturers iii. Enrollment of agricultural input providers: Seeds, plantlets, fertilizers, pesticides, technology/methodology providers/ consultants, test laboratories, and so on.

iv. Warehousing facility providers v. Enrollment of logistics services support providers vi. Enrollment of banks and insurers vii. Legal, accounting, documentation support viii. Enrollment of establishment of a robust IT enabled platform where the members can seek information, transact and make or receive electronic payments.

Ashraf’s story The benefits derived from the project can be exemplified by a real story of Ashraf - a farmer in Malappuram district. Ashraf had apprehensions about the project and it was with caution and possibly more as an experiment that he posted the details of his product, the ‘Hraswa’ variety of tapioca, on the e-Krishi website, www.e-krishi.org. But the response was far more than what he had ever known earlier. He got enquiries not only from Kerala, but from faraway Nagaland.

Geographical scope Ashraf is a not alone. There are about 20,000 farmers who have registered with the e-Krishi project since it was started in Malappuram district in 2006. Transaction of agriculture products worth INR 100 million have already been carried out through the portal. Seeing the success of the project, it has now been extended to four more districts, namely, Kannur, Kozhikode, Kazarkode and Kollam districts.

Bhoomi clubs and website – helping hand to farmers e-Krishi has also been instrumental in the setting up of farmer groups at the panchayat level named Bhoomi clubs. Bhoomi clubs meet once in a month and discuss issues related to agriculture in general and marketing in particular. Bhoomi clubs provide an opportunity to share learnings and experiences

i4d | February 2009

from each other and increase the level of trust and confidence in the electronic market system for agriculture product. There have been spillover benefits of the project. The use of ICTs for e-Krishi project also encourages the farmers to use the Internet to increase their overall awareness and identify ways of increasing their incomes through greater profit-oriented crops. Some of the progressive farmers have taken to organic and biodynamic cultivation. It has also helped the farmers to know about hundreds of Government schemes in the agriculture sector and take benefits from those schemes. It helped in promoting good agriculture practices due to better information dissemination and awareness.

Challenges faced Adoption of new technology involves change. Agmarknet training for agricultural officers e-Krishi also involved change and this posed a challenge in getting the farmers and the buyers to adopt the information. So in the second phase of the project, e-Krishi it. The farmers were reluctant to shed away the traditional has taken the initiative to create a database of farmers in various methods of marketing. Used to their traditional marketing districts of Kerala. Training has been imparted to the enumerators channels, they would not come to post the details of crops in this regard. The details collected by the enumerators - regarding they intended to sell unless it was a distress situation. In many the crop, farmer and soil information - will be crosschecked by such situations, the quality of the crop would have already a monitoring committee. This database will be digitalised by the deterioated. Reaching out to farmers through several channels help of Akshaya centres and will be posted on the website. including through Akshaya entrepreneurs helped. However, The database created will be of use to the Government, buyers it cannot be said that full success has been achieved in and the farmers alike. It will help the Government in planning, this regard. and implementing various schemes for the agricultural community Another challenge has been regarding quality standardisation. of an area. For example, when the Government proposes to This has been further complicated due to large number of crops distribute fertilisers, it will readily have a detailed list of eligible which are produced by the farming community of the district. farmers in each panchayat with just a mouse-click. Similarly, The efforts to overcome these challenges are going on. traders get information about various agri products cultivated by each farmer in a panchayat which will help them to plan their marketing activities in the area accordingly. Road ahead Presently, the traders are able to get information about the quantity, price and whereabouts of the agriculture products through the Conclusion e-Krishi website, once the farmer posts the above mentioned details e-Krishi has provided several significant lessons regarding use on the portal. But this system fails if the farmer does not post of ICTs in the agriculture sector. It demonstrates that ICTs have an important role to play in this sector. The experiences help identify issues which can be addressed in future implementations especially in the development of Mission Mode Project for this sector. Â&#x201E;

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NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION PROJECT (NAIP), NEW DELHI, INDIA

NAIPâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s e-Agriculture initiatives

www.naip.icar.org.in

NAIP is a World Bank funded project that intends to introduce innovative ideas in conducting research, education and transfer of agricultural technologies

Introduction Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is an autonomous apex body responsible for the organisation, conduct and management of research and education in all disciplines of agricultural sciences at national level. The ICAR also acts as a repository of information and provides consultancy in all fields of agriculture. Over the years it has developed a large research and training infrastructure to work on the production and other emerging problems confronted in agriculture to meet the growing demands for food, fodder, fibre and fuel. The ICAR is implementing National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), a World Bank funded project which accords high priority to introducing innovative ideas in conducting research, education and transfer of agricultural technologies. It is in sync with the Government of Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new National Policy on Agriculture (NPA) which seeks to actualise the vast untapped growth potential of Indian agriculture to generate income and employment opportunities for the rural communities. It recognises the role of private sector in agricultural research, human resource development, post-harvest management and value- addition. Under Component I

N T Yaduraju National Coordinator National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), ICAR, New Delhi nyaduraju@gmail.com R C Agrawal Principal Scientist, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi Himanshu Scientist ARIS Unit ICAR, New Delhi

Schematic diagram of the Intranet

of NAIP, efforts would be made to use ICT widely in all spheres. Some of the initiatives made or contemplated are summarised in the following sections.

Intranet and centralised data centre ICAR is in the process of introducing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, financial management system, portal applications, e-learning and knowledge management modules and messaging servers for the effective functioning of the Council. To run all these applications, a Data Centre is being developed to house computer systems with security mechanisms and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. This shall help in redundant or backup power supplies, re d u n d a n t d a t a c o m m u n i c a t i o n s connections, environmental controls (air conditioning, fire suppression, etc.), and special security devices for 24 x 7 availability. This is expected to include 10,000 user nodes. There is a ICAR-Net on ERNET (Education and Research Network) backbone consisting of 274 ICAR Institutes, regional centres, State Agricultural Universities and Central Agricultural Universities. This ICAR-NET shall be strengthened through creation of secured and scalable intranet with centralised data centre. The data centre would be located at ICAR Headquarters, New Delhi with database servers, WWW and unified mail servers, antivirus gateway and application server. A i4d | February 2009

The central data centre

backup/disaster recovery site shall also be created in subsequent phases at geographically different location to provide full data centre redundancy for uninterrupted and seamless access to the resources. The complete infrastructure shall be managed by the ERP software. The data centre shall address all the key requirements including the servers, storage area network, physical infrastructure, power conditioning devices, security, messaging and enterprises management system. The IP based video conferencing (IPVC) and IP Telephony systems are also being extended to 23 institutes of ICAR and some State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) for effective communication.

ICT-mediated knowledge management The extension system that played a key role in improving national food security since the ‘60s is in a state of disarray even as new challenges have arisen. A key step in the re-vitalisation of the extension system identified by the policy makers is to enhance knowledge flows between different actors and stakeholders in the extension process. Contemporary developments in ICT are accepted by the policy makers as providing new opportunities to make it happen. A consortium of institutions of excellence in ICT research, SAU’s and agricultural research organisations have come together to build a comprehensive and integrated set of processes and platforms to support and promote knowledge flows and exchanges between different stakeholders. This shall result in a model knowledge organisation linking research and education sectors with the upcoming and revived extension processes in Indian agriculture. Some ICT developments developed in the Indian milieu and are already in deployment in various regions of India shall be tested by the agricultural research and education partners for further refinement and integration. The SAU partners will deploy them using the affiliated Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Agricultural Science Centers) system even as they digitise available extension-related content for use on the project and subsequently anywhere through the new, integrated services that will be developed. The agricultural partners in this consortium will also engage on a significant scale in content development in various relevant aspects of agriculture, in English and in regional languages in support of expert-expert as well as expert-farmer interaction. They will organise and February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

conduct impact assessment based on emerging as well as standard methods of development communication. Wherever feasible, the agriculture partners will establish active linkages with ongoing rural information centres projects (variously termed information kiosks or rural knowledge centers) to facilitate knowledge exchanges between farmers and extension workers and experts. The ICT resource partners will develop a process for advanced content organisation in Indian agriculture called Agropedia (www.dealindia.org), which is based on the successful model of Wikipedia. They will also deploy an advanced platform called aAQUA (http://aaqua.persistent.co.in/aaqua/forum/index) to facilitate interactive discussions between experts and farmers (as well as within the community of experts) that will work in both online and offline modes. The KISSAN (www.e-krishi.org) approach, already successful in Kerala, will offer several portalbased applications to the consortium partners and will help in building practical methods for information delivery to farmers and other stakeholders in multiple modes, including broadcast and print media. Mobile telephony is accepted in this project as a key development that can enable frequent and viable interactions between stakeholders of all kinds. Besides national organisations, international organisations, NGO’s and appropriate private sector organisations will participate in different stages on this project. It will also enhance the capacity of ICT professionals to develop autonomous relationships with the NARS organisations to serve farmers through the ICT-mediated kiosks. It will lead to a highly integrated knowledge and information services model that can be deployed easily among all organisations working towards improved food and livelihood security of farmers in India. The main objectives of this activity are – (a) to build, demonstrate and sustain a model agricultural knowledge organisation and system in support of extension in India; (b) to develop and manage an online and offline forum for management of farm level Q and A and discussions which are integrated with knowledge generation and organisation; (c) to build and demonstrate an online as well as offline multi-modal information delivery arrangement linking online content and expert knowledge with query services; (d) to build and sustain geospatial data and knowledge organisation systems to support agricultural research, education and technology transfer; (e) to build capacity among agricultural experts in the advanced management of highly integrated information services in support of education, research and extension and (f ) to develop methods for viable integration of back-end digital systems and processes to foster autonomous, long term collaboration between the ICT sector and the National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARES) organisations in India.

Agroweb - Digital Dissemination System for Indian Agricultural Research (ADDSIAR) For enhancing the effectiveness of ICAR’s web-based dissemination and publishing platform by exploiting new generation Web2.0 technologies, NAIP is supporting a consortium of ICAR institutes who would address issues like visual and domain name uniformity, content quality, web applications for e-commerce (tenders) and e-publications (newsletters, research reports and papers), meta data standards, RSS feeds, discussion fora and tools for hosting information on ICAR policies, regulations, technologies,

opportunities, events, etc. The uniform guidelines developed and implemented in the project at selected institutes on pilot basis shall be scaled up to cover all ICAR institutes. A web portal would also be created and maintained at ICAR headquarters, New Delhi, which will act as a common gateway to all ICAR institutes as well as to Agricultural Research and Education System in the country. The web portal shall be deployed at ICAR data centre with new generation web technologies for content management and facilitating data exchange between different ICT platforms. Capacity building to upgrade the skills of personnel of other ICAR institutes would be covered.

Development of e-courses Indian National Agricultural Research System along with the State Agricultural Universities cater to the human resource needs of more than 60,000 agricultural graduates and scientists every year. The traditional methods of educating this diverse mass in diverse geographical areas are difficult in the changed context of globalisation and competitiveness. Innovative methods to satisfy the needs of tech-savvy new generation of students are therefore needed urgently. e-Learning is the current trend in synchronous classroom education as well as asynchronous distance education. Learning is a deeply personal act that is facilitated when learning experiences are relevant, reliable, and engaging. New technologies have the potential to engage the learners. However, technology in and of itself may not guarantee better learning. But when effectively deployed, technology can help focus attention while attracting and maintaining learner’s interest. Technology engages learners by structuring and organising information, by displaying and demonstrating procedures and operations. The NAIP is supporting projects to develop e-courses for five undergraduate programs in Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Horticulture, Fisheries Science and Home Science. It amounts to developing over 300 courses in e-format and making them available both online and offline through CDs and DVDs. This exercise will benefit students and teachers alike in making available uniform

and quality learning material in all the universities and colleges throughout the country.

Krishi Prabha - Indian agricultural dissertations repository Doctoral dissertations - the end product of doctoral research is a rich source of original information, access to which is severely restricted due to absence of information in digital form. NAIP is funding a project wherein over 10,000 doctoral dissertations produced in India during 2000-2006 would be digitised and made available online and offline. NAIP would also promote appropriate policy and create a national repository of these resources.

Consortium of e-Resources in Agriculture (CeRA) The NAIP has established a Consortium for e-Resources in Agriculture (CeRA) for providing online access to e-journals and resources in over 120 libraries. This will greatly help the resource-poor SAUs who find it difficult to subscribe to exorbitant international scientific journals. This will provide a new and competitive research environment where the scientists will have greater access to quality research material and spend less time in literature search. Increased scientific output, quality publications in high impact journals, greater visibility of research by our scientists at the international level are some of the positive impacts envisioned.

Conclusions Although India is a world leader in the IT sector, the application of ICT in research, education and technology transfer in agriculture is at a nascent stage. It is hoped that some of the initiatives introduced by the ICAR through the NAIP will trigger greater interest and activity in this area. It is expected that these will snowball into a national mission and make the NARS system modern, vibrant and responsible to the requirement of all stakeholders.

Philippines Government launches K-Agrinet to beneﬁt farmers In order to promote the use of ICT to attain agricultural sustainability and competitiveness, the Government of Philippines has launched a project, called Knowledge Working Towards Enhancing Agricultural Communities Programme or K-Agrinet for the country’s farmers. The project is a collaborative effort among country’s agencies to utilise Information Technology (IT) as a tool to track the dissemination of agriculture and natural resources information and technologies to farmers, upland dwellers, and rural entrepreneurs. There are four following institutional key players in the agriculture and natural resource sectors that complement each other in the programme’s four areas of intervention covering the stages of knowledge development and utilisation. e-Learning: The Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture of the Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rice Research Institute (DA-PhilRice) leads e-Learning group that will

focus on e-extension and distance learning for the agriculture extension workers. e-Consortia: The Department of Science and Technology - Philippine Council for Agriculture, forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (DOST-PCARRD) is leading the consortia. The consortia intensifies technology and knowledge generation and exchange among existing partner R&D Institutions through improved ICT tools and applications. e-Farm: DOST-PCARRD also leads the e-Farm, which promotes e-Commerce by initiating e-based farm to market opportunities through the FITS centres and their respective Farmer-Scientists. e-Agrikultura: The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) are leading the e-Agrikultura that mobilises and generates the participation of agrarian reform communities into the programme. i4d | February 2009

COUNTRYWISE COMMUNICATION, UK

Low-cost video content locally produced

www.countrywise.com

Phil Malone Director Countrywise Communication, United Kingdom media@countrywise.com

February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

UK based Countrywise Communication is a well established video production company concentrating on agriculture, environment and the food industry. Since 1985 it has been producing training, promotional and information video programmes in many countries around the world - many of which have won international awards. In 2003, Director Josephine Rodgers was asked to train up a team in Bogra, Bangladesh so that they could show the progress being made by women in the villages nearby, in improving drying and storage techniques for rice seed. The trainees from the Rural Development Academy (RDA) and the Women’s NGO, Thengamara Mohila Sabuj Sangha (TMSS), spent two weeks with Josephine learning how to make video programmes and by the end of the course had completed their first programme. The trainees spent the first four days learning about research, scriptwriting, visiting the village and how to interview. They then learnt by doing – using the camera, organising the sound, making sure the interviewees were relaxed and obtaining all of the necessary action footage which would make the programme easier to edit and more professional.

The editing was done on a normal computer with extra hard drive space using Adobe Premiere. Interview clips were chosen and the team contributed with voice-overs and shot selection. When the first edit was completed the programme was shown to a group of women from another village who knew nothing about the techniques demonstrated. This showing was designed to get feedback about whether the audience understood the message, whether changes were needed to make it more clear and to gauge reaction about whether the techniques could be useful to them. The final programme was then put onto Video CD and DVD for distribution. After the initial training the team went on to produce 3 more programmes within the next 12 months. When Josephine and I saw the quality of the programmes in terms of technical skill – good framing, well shot interviews, easy to understand messages and content – we were impressed and immediately entered the programmes into a prestigious international awards competition. The Bangladesh programmes were successful in the ‘Effective Communication’ category joining programmes from Ford and Sony in the top three. The programmes have been successful in Bangladesh and throughout South Asia, because there is no problem for people to watch the programmes thanks to the availability of Video CD and The team from RDA Bogra and NGO TMSS filming interviews in DVD players in villages because Maria village near Bogra of Bollywood movies. When the Photo Credit: Paul Van Mele

Following up on the last year’s Grameen Gyan Abhiyan meeting held in Delhi, Phil, hopes to see improved communication channels that help India’s rural poor with a belief that the required training to improve quality standards will be facilitated

e) Use a computer with adequate hard drive capability f ) Test out your programme before finalising it g) Keep the programme length below ten minutes and cover just one issue at a time (how a problem has been overcome, how attitudes have changed, before and after) Once we have trained teams we have been able to offer support by SMS text, e-mail and phone. The main problems the teams encounter are normally software related, within the editing programmes. In terms of distribution in both Bangladesh and Africa, DVD has become the most efficient means with the possibility of up to 8 language tracks. Local and national TV are always interested in good quality rural footage, stories of inspiration and hints to help people save money or make better profit from their agricultural activities. The big question then is always - can people access the programmes on the web? Our question back is normally, can your target audience get access to the web? If the answer is yes, then, make sure it is available for distribution in the languages needed, if not, then how can people get to see the programmes for themselves. The Bangladesh programmes are available on Youtube and other sites, but this is normally just for development professionals to view, but this has the potential to change. I believe that there is much more that can be done to build up capacity for producing high quality, low cost digital video in India. Teams could be trained among unemployed rural youth, with NGO’s, Telecentres, etc. At the moment the only way we can

Photo Credit: Paul Van Mele

programmes are shown to village women the new Bollywood superstars are the women shown in the video. They are an inspiration to other women and men to try new techniques in seed drying and storage. Subsequent analysis by researchers has shown that the videos have resulted in a much better Josephine Rodgers of Countrywise take-up of the techniques Communication training the team in editing shown than by using traditional knowledge dissemination methods. The quality of the programmes was such that they have been shown on TV in Bangladesh, in Nepal, in Africa and the UK. They have also been shown to farmers in West and Eastern Africa who have started to use the techniques demonstrated. The programmes have now been translated into French and other local African languages. Since that initial training, Countrywise Communication has gone on to train teams in West and East Africa, the most recent being in November 2008 on the Kenya - Uganda border. As people with an interest in ICT you know that the cost of most technical equipments have dropped and the technical specifications keep improving. Our main starting point is to help rural people to make programmes which inspire others. Using visual means is much more appropriate in many cases than text based solutions – especially in a country like India with so many language challenges. Although very good video producers exist in cities across India, most of them think like ‘City Guys’ and do not have the link with the rural population which is needed. There is a need to make sure programmes are not just visually appealing but have technically accurate information and are easily understood by the rural audience. At Countrywise Communication we really believe that the leadership provided by Professor M S Swaminathan in ensuring that the Government, NGO and Private Sector join together should be applauded. It seems that in many parts of the developing world the only organisations investing in the rural sector are the mobile phone companies and some banking institutions. In India though, there is evidence that Government does want to help in bringing information to villagers and help with two-way communication. The communication challenges facing people who want to make video programmes to inspire others in agriculture and rural development are as follows: a) Do not compromise on quality b) Although video equipment is easily available in the cities, it is not possible to produce quality without ‘hands-on training’ (remember the DTP disasters) c) Preparation, through research, planning and script writing, before filming ensures you will achieve better results d) Always use a tripod and make sure you get enough different shots to help with the editing

The final programme being viewed in a Bangladesh Village

see that large numbers can be trained is for us to train a number of trainers who have an interest in these types of programmes. Once those trainers have become confident they can then deliver training across India and the sub-continent. The role of the Telecentres or the GGA (Grameen Gyan Abhiyan)* should be to act as a library for content, so that the most appropriate videos can reach their intended audiences. Remember even farmers are time poor, so the programmes should be short, relevant, provoke discussion and inspire change. If this system could be established it would provide a valuable and dynamic resource for boosting the income of India’s farmers and rural poor. We, at Countrywise Communication, would love to assist, but it is Indian trainers and production teams who will make this possible. * The Grameen Gyaan Abhiyan is Rural Knowledge Movement in India which has been working with an aim to achieve ICT enabling of 6,37,000 villages of India has built a multi stake holder partnership with the different ICT4D models present in India. (www.gga.org.in) i4d | February 2009

VILLAGE INFORMATION CENTRES IN TAMIL NADU, TANUVAS, CHENNAI, INDIA

e-Empowering resource poor farmers The article is a case study of the Village Information Centres set up by the Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University in various villages in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu

Dr F R Sheriff Professor and Head Department of Poultry Science Madras Veterinary College, Chennai, India poultrysciencemvc@gmail.com

February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

Introduction Most of the Indian villagers are poor in utilising available information and new technologies to meet their day-to-day needs for livelihood. Scientists of Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University have been transferring latest technologies over several years through conventional media. Our University is continuously looking for newer, faster, cost effective, easy to understand methods and efficient ways of dissemination of technologies and its related information for the economic benefits for the rural farmers and stakeholders. Village Information Centres were established by the University on research mode. Three multimedia Village Information Centres were established in Tamil Nadu at Chitteri, Kuzhumani and Pudhuthamaraipatti villages at Vellore, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai districts, respectively. The District University Centres were established as Hub Centres. A Senior Research Fellow and an Information Specialist were appointed in each Village Information Centre. Dayto-day activities of these staff were to provide basic computer knowledge, needed information, organising, conducting committee meetings, revenue accounting, collecting survey details and micro planning at Village Information Centres. These hub and village centres were equipped with computer, printer and other accessories, telephone, Internet connectivity either by dial up or by WLL technology, audio and video equipments, library with printed books, newspapers, educational audio and video compact discs containing Animal Husbandry practices and related technologies. Based on the need of these communities, technological information were posted on exclusive web pages and hosted in the university website. This project started on 16th July 2001 and was completed on 15th July 2003

under financial assistance of International Development Research Centre, Canada. These centres are still functioning under the leadership of the Veterinary University Training and Research Centres and being run by the village level community. A total of 17780 people visited these three centres during the project period. Out of this 27.46 percent have used computers or learnt the basic operations in the centres. Audio and video media did not evoke a very good response and the utility were only 10.72 and 1.14 percent respectively

Use of online and offline information in rural villages During the project period one of the kiosk centres of Dhan foundation in a village of Madurai district sent an e-mail to Pudhuthamaraipatti Village Information Centre informing about some disease outbreak in sheep flock with mortality of two animals and about 100 and more affected. This information was transmitted by phone to the Professor and Head of Veterinary University Training and Research Centre. He took up inspection of all the animals on the same day and found that the sheep were affected with Enterotoxemia disease. He made arrangements for vaccination and treatment of ailing animals thus saving almost 600 odd animals in the village and its surrounding villages. This became possible because of faster communication from the userend to the technocrat for timely help. Pandi, an agriculturalist who owns four acres of land wanted to get information on the latest short duration drought resistant variety of paddy as there was severe drought in that year through Village Information Centre. He sent a mail to Agricultural College and Research Institute, Madurai after getting the address from the Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website. He got

immediate response with full details about its availability and cost of seed. He successfully took up the agricultural activity with the recommended variety, harvested and was benefited. In the absence of this facility he could have incurred heavy losses. The Centre received an email from the famous Thiruparankundram Temple seeking advice about nose rings that need to be put on camels for effective control during Temple festivals. The local Veterinary Doctors had no knowledge about the method of fixing nose ring in camels as it is a rare procedure in Tamil Nadu where this Camels are not available in large numbers. The Village Vnformation Centre sent an email to the University Hub Centre and Uma Rani, a Veterinary Surgeon, was deputed by the Head of Veterinary University Training and Research Centre and she fixed the nosering the next day and the animals were put to temple use after three weeks.

By educational CDs Pandiyan of Pudhuthamaraipatti village wanted to switch over from agriculture to dairy farming for higher income generation. He visited the Village Information Centre and saw the Dairy farming lesson prepared by the University in CD format. He underwent training on Dairy Farming course also at the Hub Centre, Madurai. He requested the Head of the Hub Centre to send him a project report by email for starting a dairy farm and on its receipt submitted it to the Bank Manager by email. On submission of the documents at Indian Bank he got the financial assistance of INR 50000. Now he owns two cows and earns a revenue of INR 2000 every month by selling milk.

By static information in the computer By using the static information of the addresses of the Veterinarians in the Village Information Centre, Chitteri Shanthi Punniamurthy got the assistance of the nearest Veterinarian and got her dairy animal artificially inseminated in time. She was well aware of timely insemination for the dairy animals to get conceived. The animal became pregnant as the procedure was done at the right time. Based on the observation of the ways in which the these centres were used, we were able to notice that the women and girls were not approaching them for accessing information. It was learnt that the cultural barriers and norms of the society prevent the girls and women to mingle freely in the community and for accessing

information through these communication tools for self learning. Hence, testing of the effectiveness of ICT tools was thought of by locating these tools in houses of women belonging to self help groups (SHGs). Two SHGs working in each of the Cuddalore (Rural), Kanchepuram (semi-Urban) and Chennai (Urban) districts were selected to implement this project. Information centres were located in the house of these women SHGs. We installed the IT tools as per the previous project. An Information Specialist was engaged for facilitating the members and the women in the community to learn and use the IT tools under the financial support of UNESCO, New Delhi. This Project started functioning from 5th February 2003 and was completed on 31st March 2005. A total of 103 women were the direct beneficiaries and were between 21 to 55 years of age and their average monthly earning was between INR 1000 to INR 5000 through micro enterprise activities and through labour work in agricultural lands. Except one beneficiary no one had agricultural land holding. None of the members had any idea about computers, Internet, email, fax and its use. Some of the urban and semi-urban group members had heard of it but never used it. The members of these SHGs were trained at this Village Information Centre by the staff of Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University for a period of one week. One Information Specialist also visited the centres regularly to teach the nominated leader about using the computer. Due to the availability of computer, printer, radio and educational CDs, more members started operating the computer and also learnt vermicomposting, bread making, screen printing, dairy and rabbit farming, Dairy products preparation, fish pickle preparation, and other income generating activities through the educational CDs. The rural Self Help Group Information Centre showed more interest in computer related work with 41.34 percent of people actively participating in the functioning of the centre and deriving benefits through it followed by semi-urban Self Help Group (31.72 percent) and Urban group (26.94 percent).

Findings at SHG rural information centres These SHG members also used the offline information available in the centre and also participated in the videoconference arranged

i4d | February 2009

by EID Parry Ltd, had discussions with the Vice-Chancellor of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore on agricultural practices. After starting the centre, people have started sending and receiving emails to and from their friends, other information centres and their relatives. The trend seemed to be increasing as the confidence level and capacity was growing day by day though regular usage.

Findings at semi-urban SHG information centres Devi, a resident of Pallikaranai village in Kanchepuram district started Rabbit rearing at her house after watching a CD on Rabbit Farming created by Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University. She started earning within six months by sale of grown up rabbits for meat as well as bunnies for rearing by others.

Findings at urban SHG information centres All the members were interested to browse the net if it is in Tamil language. Since they lack knowledge in English they feel the information is not useful to them. Some of them are writing letters in Tamil on paper which is scanned and sent as attachment in emails to officials, friends and relatives. Lessons learnt from this project: • Content development should be a regular and continuous process • For the success of the project the Centre Manager’s efficiency, interest, rapport with people, computer literacy, his/her image with the villagers matter a lot for the success of this type of centre • Members believe that without computer literacy their children will not get job in future • CDs on screen-printing technology, dairy farming and rabbit rearing; Offline information on addresses of Veterinarians, Agricultural College, phone numbers of ambulance service were very useful.

‘Farming, backbone of livelihood security’ For a world reeling under security threats, economic meltdown and climate change, there exists a ‘substrate of conditions’ that causes anguish and breeds violence. The conditions include widespread hunger and eroding food security, agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan said. He was speaking on the ‘causes of internal and external security threats’ at a talk organised by a Mumbai-based group KARM. “Hunger is still a major problem, especially in India, which has the largest number of malnourished people. Every third child born in India is underweight,” he said. And while the United Nations Millennium Development Goals aimed at a 50 per cent reduction in hunger and poverty, last year 50 million more hungry people were added to the world, thanks to the rise in fuel prices. Prof. Swaminathan said tackling hunger involved availability of food at current consumption levels, access to February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

food and absorption of food in the body. A food security strategy should address all the three areas. Food security was linked to livelihood security as 60 per cent of Indians depended on agriculture. This majority comprised the producers of food, who were also consumers. International bodies such as the World Trade Organisation did not comprehend this ethos, Prof. Swaminathan said. “Agriculture is the backbone of livelihood security; it is not a food producing machine. In the developed countries, merely 2 to 3 per cent are the producers.” A growth in agriculture would therefore be a job-led growth. On external threats to food security, he said ‘alien invasive species’ such as virus causing avian influenza, and strains like Ug99 from Uganda posed risks. Using technology for surveillance systems and knowledge dispersal at the local level was needed to prepare ourselves for potential damage from climate change, Prof. Swaminathan said.

NOKIA LIFE TOOLS, NOKIA, INDIA

m-Serving Indian agriculture The author explains the thought process behind one of Nokia’s upcoming application which will, among other things, give farmers access to localised and timely information without depending on GPRS

Jan Blom Research Leader Nokia Research Centre Bangalore, India jan.blom@nokia.com

China and India, the two most populous countries in the world, are both experiencing economic growth despite differences in the geographic distribution of their workforces. While majority of the Chinese now live in cities, India is still a predominantly rural society, with nearly two thirds of the population being rurally based. According to an estimate dating to 2006 (FAO database), agriculture is the main source of income for 58% of the Indian workforce. Despite constituting a major source of income and an important area of export, several challenges characterise the farming practices of today’s India. To name just a few, the government is experiencing difficulties in disseminating information regarding novel farming techniques and best practices in a country which is multilingual and divided into nearly three hundred agro-climatic zones. The market prices are not readily accessible to the farmers and further, the middle man is perceived to take a marked cut of the profits generated by sale of the agricultural produce. In several cases, the crux of the problem lies in how to connect an individual farmer to other parties for better access to information or increased possibility to co-operate, be it other farmers, the local co-operative, the market place, or the government. Information should flow between the relevant stakeholders so as to effectivise the production process. With the mobile phone penetration increasing at a phenomenal rate in India, several players have turned to mobile technology as an answer to some of the challenges faced by the farmers. The national teledensity is reaching a very high level and the rural consumers are taking up mobile telephony at a fast pace. Hence, an increasing proportion of individuals in the

agricultural ecosystem have lately become users of information and communication technology (ICT). While the uptake of the PC and fixed Internet has been sluggish, the exponential growth of the mobile phone user base has led to a situation in which mobile Internet based information can reach the urban and rural masses and provide unforeseen utility across a range of verticals, including farming. There are many recent examples of delivering information residing in the ‘cloud’ to farmers via mobile phone. Companies including IFFCO, Airtel, Reliance Communications, as well as Reuters have generated services delivering e.g. mandi prices to an individual farmer. Nokia is launching a global service in the first half of 2009 titled Life Tools, and one of its aims is to provide information and tips to the farmers. Life Tools provides information to the farmer that is relevant across the whole farming cycle, ranging from sowing to growing to harvesting to selling the produce. Nokia Life Tools has an icon-led, graphically rich interface. Presentation of information in tabular formats and the capability to display two different languages simultaneously on the same screen enhance usability. This service is designed to work wherever you can use a mobile phone without any hassles for settings or the need for GPRS. Behind the intuitive, rich Nokia Life Tools interface, updates are sent over SMS without the consumers even realising it.

Identifying long-term opportunities in agricultural mobile services While several companies, including Nokia, are launching commercial products in the area of agricultural mobile Internet services, it is also important to adopt a long term perspective so as to be able to i4d | February 2009

Nokia Life Tools is a range of Agriculture, Education and Entertainment services designed especially for the consumers in small towns and rural areas of the emerging markets. Aimed at providing timely and relevant information customised to the userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s location and personal preferences directly on their mobile devices, Nokia Life Tools is the first step towards bridging the digital divide.

identify new opportunities in this area. Nokia Research Centre (NRC) is a globally distributed research organisation conducting exploratory research focusing on what might be viable 5-10 years from now. The focus of its Bangalore-based unit is to investigate mobile growth opportunities concerning India and emerging markets in general. The setup is multidisciplinary, consisting of social scientists, designers and technologists. The mission of the research group is to investigate the extent to which mobile technology can improve the wellbeing of Indian consumers and communities. Nokia designs concepts that are grounded on understanding of user needs and we aim to take the concepts to the prototype level, so as to assess the impact of the technologies on the communities. A project titled Kisan investigates the role of mobile technology in empowering farmers in an emerging market context such as India. During an initial phase of the project, our researchers set out to Karnataka and Maharashtra to study the everyday agricultural Stage Plannng

Growing

Selling

practices. One of the research questions was related to what kind of information is relevant to the farmers across the various stages of the farming cycle. The following table describes the summary of the information needs, as discovered by our researchers with the help of interviews and observations. As can be noted, the type of information needed ranges from binary (e.g. weather forecasts) to highly complex (communicating about global trends in agricultural trade) and the source of the information varies from local to global. The long term research challenge is to create services that are highly personalised and location specific, taking into account the agro-climatic conditions, crop portfolio and aspirations of the particular farmer.

From competition to co-production

One of the main findings of the Kisan user study was the underlined importance of locally based collaborations. The most significant form of information dissemination among those studied was day-to-day social interaction among Information needs local farmers. Information and tips were exchanged as Weather patterns - monitoring and early warnings of upcoming part of casual social encounters and the trust placed in changes. connections concerning oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social network played an Availability (and pre-booking) of labour. important role. A piece of information stemming from Market Trends that help plan the next crop/s. a local acquaintance was often valued more than that Information on current agri-technologies and best practices for received from a government run agro-advice centre. optimising produce. Another factor that emphasised the importance of Location-specific advice for precision farming. locally based social interaction was that local farming Pest alerts and information - early warnings and detection; advice communities are highly co-operative, up until the point and recommendations on preventive measures, damage control. when the produce is sold. Information is exchanged freely during the sowing and growing phases and Tracking and managing resources (individual and collaborative). recommendations are provided without hesitations. A Access to market prices and trends for local, national and term that describes this behavioural pattern well is cointernational markets. production. The weather conditions, soil type and types Transportation logistics. of crops grown are to great extent the same between Storage and warehousing possibilities. members of the local farming communities. Hence,

February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

Challenges in the design of agricultural services

Kisan study conducted by NRC India revealed that information related to farming was exchanged on daily basis, as part of casual social encounters. Instead of replacing such behaviour, is it possible for ICT to supplement this information exchange ?

the information received from a local colleague is relevant and it makes a lot of sense to co-produce rather than compete. The opportunity, when it comes to designing novel types of services for this context, is related to harnessing this locally based social capital. Could we design mobile applications that disseminate information between users’ mobile devices, during face-to-face encounters? Could we design communication solutions where local farmers can exchange tips, share resources and even collaborate when it comes to selling the produce?

The above sections have been concerned with highlighting the opportunities associated with using mobile forms of ICT to empower Indian farmers. The main argument is simple – since the mobile phone has become ubiquitous, even in the rural parts of this country, why not disseminate information and enable new forms of communication within the agricultural ecosystem with the help of mobile services? The challenges lying ahead are significant, however. From the perspective of the farmer, the user interface needs to be intuitive and support the local language. India is characterised by low literacy levels - is it possible to move toward less textual user interface solutions, such as voice based interactions? From the point of view of the farming practices, will mobile technology be accepted as a new source of information, alongside the age-old practice of social exchange and face-to-face interaction? Will it only be the progressive farmers who adopt these new types of services or will we witness a wide scale adoption of agricultural mobile systems, across socio economic categories and geographic regions of India? Regardless of the answers to these questions, it is clear that wireless communication has an advantage over the PC based systems. The wireless infrastructure is well developed across India (as opposed to the infrastructure supporting fixed Internet) and mobile telephony has been widely accepted by the rural population. These factors act as important enablers in the mission of empowering rural India with affordable and relevant mobile services.

India launches Agricultural Wikipedia Indian scientists have launched an ‘Agricultural Wikipedia’ that will act as an online repository of agricultural information in the country. Indian Government initiative called ‘Agropedia’ was launched on 12 January 2009. The project called Agropedia aims to disseminate crop and region-specific information to farmers and agriculture extension workers. Agropedia will also provide information for students and researchers. Currently, the website contains information on nine crops, including rice, wheat, chickpea, pigeon pea, vegetable pea, lychee, sugarcane, groundnut, and sorghum. Agriculture researchers will continuously add and validate the content by using open source tools as used in Wikipedia. The website will also contain blogs and forums on agriculture to exchange knowledge. The portal will help to communicate agricultural information and research findings to farmers, students and researchers. The INR 85 million project will be implemented over the next 30 months and is backed by the National Agricultural Innovation Project, a six-year government programme intended to modernise agriculture. The funding for the project is provided by the World Bank and the Indian Government with other six Indian agricultural and technology institutions partnered in the project to provide

information and technological expertise. In the initial stage, the project will develop a mechanism to manage the vast repository of knowledge and later on it will develop ways to disseminate the knowledge. While launching the project, V Balaji, Head of Knowledge Management and Sharing with the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), a partner in the project, stated that it is hoped that even where farmers do not have no access to the Internet, the Agropedia information can be used as a basis for radio plays also. i4d | February 2009

E-AUCTION

SYSTEM, TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES (TCS), INDIA

e-Auction of small cardamom www.tcs.com

An innovative approach to the age old price discovery mechanism for procurement of small cardamom which marries the old with the new while weeding out the unfair trade practices that have crept in over the years

Tanmoy Chakrabarty Vice President & Head - Government Industry Solutions Unit Tata Consultancy Services Limited New Delhi, India tanmoy.chakrabarty@tcs.com

February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

The fortunes and the future of the agriculture sector in any economy and more so in an agrarian economy is intertwined with its ability to maximise its financial returns. And the livelihood of the farmers is closely linked to his ability to get realistic returns for his produce. The farming community in any developing country is vulnerable, uninformed, voiceless and therefore exploited by unscrupulous elements in the agriculture trade. Therefore, it is a relentless search by all the stakeholders, government, trade as well as the farming community for a trading model which could ensure a true price realisation for the agricultural commodity which will satisfy the livelihood aspirations of the farming community and decent returns to the trading community. The e-Auction for small cardamom is an effort to ensure a genuine price discovery and to protect the legitimate interests of both: the farmers as well as the buyers. Cardamom is known to have been a commodity of international commerce since ancient times. At present, it is a major foreign exchange earner for the central exchequer. India is the second largest producer and third largest exporter by value of cardamom in the world. Ever since then, the Cardamom business was under the direct control of the princely states like Travancore and Cochin. Towards the end of 19th century the state monopoly was lifted and private players were allowed to enter the market. This led to the free market dynamics to control the cardamom business. In 1977, the Cardamom (Licensing and Marketing) Rules were passed with a view to regulate the functions of the different participants in the market such as cardamom growers, auctioneers and dealers. As per the Cardamom (Licensing & Marketing) Rules, 1987, all the producers of cardamom

should sell their produce only through a licensed auctioneer/dealer and the auction system came into existence since then. The existing cardamom auction in India follows the modified English auction model. It is an open-cry-ascending price model. An auction is a natural process of price discovery mechanism wherein the seller and buyer engage themselves to discover a price which satisfies both of them. But in a traditional physical auction, the auctioneer and the bidders can influence the bidding process through unfair means. The auctioneer can influence the bidders through his verbal and non verbal communication. Similarly, the bidders can also form a cartel and influence the movement of price for their ulterior business motives. All these unfair trade practices affect the true price discovery mechanism and erode the confidence of the producers in the trade model. This has a direct impact on the price realised by the farmers/producers. The Spices Board of India, which is the apex body to provide policy and market support to the spices trade in the country had realized the vulnerability of the small farmers in realising legitimate returns for their produce and desired to reform the auction process for small cardamoms. One of the reform initiatives which the Spices Board put in position is the electronic auction system to replace the manual open out-cry auction. Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS) partnered with Spices Board in this endeavour. The e-Auction system was conceptualised on the premise that the anonymity of the bidders during the auction will aid in the true price discovery and benefit both the bidders and the producers. The new auction system was designed on the lines of English Auction, with the

manual outcry being replaced with the electronic bidding. The auction process was set up with bidding terminals assembled in a Local Area Network. Care had been exercised to closely mimic the manual system without its shortcomings so as to increase the acceptance and reduce the time for implementation. The sensitisation of the stakeholders, both the producers and bidders was dovetailed as a key activity in the initiative to ensure its success. The anxiety, apprehensions and fear of technology were

anticipated and adequately addressed so that the initiative did not meet with any roadblocks along its way. The negative influence of the vested interests was neutralised through creation of awareness and sensitisation amongst the stakeholders. Suitable modifications in the support processes were introduced to facilitate the e-Auction processes. Sustainability was another area of serious concern during the design and implementation stage of the initiative. Opinion leaders and internal champions within the trading and farming community were identified and carefully nurtured to be the ambassadors of the new initiative. Sufficient time and effort was spent to create an internal pool of resources to operate and maintain the e-Auction system. The community was provided with the initial hand holding till such time the process reached its threshold of acceptance and sustainability. The e-Auction system has been in operation for the past eighteen months. The success and sustainability can be viewed from the fact that the producers were able to realise on an average twenty percent more for their produce and that the trade reposed faith in the e-Auction and did not revert to old manual outcry system since the introduction of e-Auction system. The e-Auction system truly met the genuine aspirations of the small cardamom producers of true price discovery for their produce, arrested the unfair trade practices and ensured their continued interest in cardamom cultivation.

Voice of South: SEED Awards 2009 SEED is organising 2009 SEED Awards for Entrepreneurship in Sustainable Development for those who have entrepreneurial and innovative idea that is locally-driven and has great potential to contribute for sustainable development in countries with developing or transition economies. The SEED Award recognises and rewards winners in two levels: 20 SEED Award Winners: The 20 SEED Award Winners will be announced at the UN Commission for Sustainable Development in May 2009 in New York. Winners will be publicised and profiled through SEED’s network. Winners will also receive US$5,000 support to connect them with potential partners and funders. 10 Gold Award Winners: For this award, winners will be selected from 20 SEED Award Winners, who will receive the extended ‘SEED Award’. The nature of the support services will depend on the needs that the winners identify and will be developed jointly with them. Winners will receive additional support of worth US$35,000 that will be delivered over a period of 6-12 months. Winners for this award will be announced during August 2009.

Winners will be able to receive support of worth up to US$ 40,000 to help in establishing and increasing the impact of their venture. The deadline for sending applications is 16 March 2009. To apply, please visit http://www.adelphi-consult.com/ seedaward2009/ The application form is also available at http://www.seedinit.org/mainpages2/awards/2009/ 2009ApplicationFormSEEDAwards.doc SEED is a global network founded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). For further details about the awards, please visit http://www. seedinit.org/mainpages2/awards/what/index.php

i4d | February 2009

Global

Knowledge resources on agriculture World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development The report calls for greater investment in agriculture in developing countries. The report warns that the sector must be placed at the centre of the development agenda if the goals of halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 are to be realised. While 75 per cent of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poor live in rural areas in developing countries, a mere 4 per cent of official development assistance goes to agriculture. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a region heavily reliant on agriculture for overall growth, public spending for farming is also only 4 per cent of total government spending and the sector is still taxed at relatively high levels. For the poorest people, GDP growth originating in agriculture is about four times more effective in raising incomes of extremely poor people than GDP growth originating outside the sector. www.worldbank.org/wdr2008

The International Task Force on Commodity Risk Management (ITF) T h e I F T w a s c o n ve ye d i n 1 9 9 9 implementation of price risk management work occurred in 2002. IFT is working to determine the feasibility of market based price risk management instruments and index-based weather risk management instruments in developing countries. The ITF aims to give market participants in developing countries access to these instruments through training and education. Currently the project is working on expanding both price and weather February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

to a greater number of producers and countries. http://www-esd.worldbank.org/crmg/home.htm

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) The CGIAR is a strategic alliance of members, partners and international agricultural centres that mobilises science to benefit the poor. CGIAR aims to achieve sustainable food security and reduce poverty in developing countries through scientific research and research-related activities in the fields of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, policy, and environment. http://www.cgiar.org/index.html

Agriculture and Rural Development Department (ARD) The website is managed by staff of the Agriculture and Rural Development Department (ARD) of the World Bank Group. In collaboration with colleagues in the Sustainable Development Network and across the Bank, ARD works to reduce poverty through sustainable rural development. ARD also provides analytical and advisory services to the Bankâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s regions on a wide range of agriculture and rural development topics http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/thematic.htm

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) IITA is an international non-profit R4D (Research for Development) organisation, governed by a Board of Trustees, and supported primarily by the CGIAR (www. cgiar.org). The network of scientists is dedicated to the development of

technologies that reduce producer and consumer risk, increase local production, and generate wealth. Its mission is to enhance food security. http://www.iita.org

The International Centre for Agricultural Research In The Dry Areas (ICARDA) Established in 1977, ICARDA is one of the 15 centres strategically located all over the world and supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). With its main research station and offices based in Aleppo, Syria,

ICARDA works through a network of partnerships with national, regional and international institutions, universities, non-governmental organisations and ministries in the developing world; and with advanced research institutes in industrialised countries. ICARDA aims to improve the welfare of poor people and alleviate poverty through research and training in dry areas of the developing world, by increasing the production, productivity and nutritional quality of food, while preserving and enhancing the natural resource base. http://www.icarda.cgiar.org

WEB2.0 TECHNOLOGIES

Social networking for.... farmers!!! A social networking platform for Indian farmers will allow them to directly contact other farmers, extension workers, scientists and allied professionals/ institutes, irrespective of their geographic location

Sapna A Narula Assistant Professor College of Agribusiness Management G B Pant University of Agriculture and Technology Pantnagar, India narulasapna@gmail.com

Introduction “Are you on facebook? On orkut? On Hi5?” It’s a common question that we face nowa-days. Social networking through the Internet has become a part of our life be it a student, a professional or a housewife. Then why not for farmers as well as for other rural folks, who constitute a large part of our population. According to a recent research by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), there are 3.3 million active Internet users in rural India. The research, which is a part of the ongoing ‘I-Cube 2008’ being jointly undertaken by Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) International and IAMAI also notes that there are 5.5 million people based in rural areas, who claim to have used Internet at some point of time. Through public as well as private sector initiatives, Internet has slowly started touching the lives of people in rural areas. Various IT initiatives have been taken up by Government of India to facilitate agricultural marketing such as Kissan Call Centres - telephony initiative (www. kisancallcenter.net), village knowledge centres proposed under AGRISNET and web portal initiative (www.agmarket.nic. in) providing market price information across various agricultural markets in India. ASHA in Assam and e-Krishi in Karnataka and Kissan Kerala are some examples of initiatives taken by state governments and e-Choupal, Grasso and Warna being some other examples. Despite many barriers, ICT is gradually spreading to rural areas and is slowly finding its place among the farmers (Narula, 2008).

Why social networking? Information and Communication Technologies are a crucial requirement for sustainable agricultural development in

developing economies, where farmers and other rural workforce do not have direct access to information regarding markets and customers. Modern communication technologies, when applied to rural areas, can help improve communication, increase participation, and disseminate information and share knowledge and skills among communities. New information and communication technologies can generate possibilities to solve problems of rural poverty, inequality, and provide an opportunity to bridge the gap between information-rich and information-poor as well as support sustainable development in rural and agricultural communities. It can facilitate dialogue among communities with government planners, development agencies, researchers, and technical experts; encourage community participation in decision making. The challenge is not only to improve the accessibility of communication technology to the rural population but also to improve its relevance to the masses (Narula & Sharma, 2008). This assumes great importance in agriculture economies, where rural masses including farmers have not been able to harness the power of information and communication technologies to their use rendering them uncompetitive in the global marketplace. Though many ICT models are being tried, a few of them have used social networking as one of the opportunities to facilitate interaction among farmers. Why social networking is important for these active users of Internet is that they are also devoid of relevant information and have the inherent need to connect to people from other parts of the world. Social networking can actually facilitate their interaction with other communities of their use as well as choice. In other countries too, sites such as Farm Foody (http://farmfoody.org) and i4d | February 2009

Cotton Community (www.cottoncommunity.com) are helping farmers establish backward as well as forward linkages. Rural people are socially receptive and are influenced by lifestyles of their peers as well as opinion leaders. Researches have shown that opinion leaders play an important role in farmers’ decisions regarding the purchase of goods and services, managing their agricultural activities as well as providing answers to their personal problems. Support from opinion leaders has been found to be very useful in rural areas.

Alongside, studies have observed that the rural populace in developing countries still have difficulty in accessing crucial information in order to make timely decisions. It is because of these needs, they connect to each other. In the past, Indian farmers used to sit under a tree and discuss their farming as well as personal problems, a traditional networking meeting termed choupal. The farmers’ needs could be classified into three types based on their priority. Some of these are high priority needs such as market information related to commodity prices, arrivals, market demand and new avenues to sell their crops. Besides market related information, farmers need accurate information about the weather so that crop planning could be done in advance. Farmers also need some of the e-Governance services such as ration card, PAN card, land record system, house tax services through Internet kiosks, etc. Among the other needs, education and computer training have also been identified as two important services for which the farmers were willing to use internet kiosks at their villages. People living in rural areas are really ambitious to provide their children the best education, but are lacking in information resources for the same. The demand for health services has also been felt. However, farmers do not frequently use e-mails and social networking, as they seem to be socially very close within the community and interact with them on a regular basis. Social networking could provide a platform for all the farmers to connect to each other regardless of their geographic location.

What can we do through social networking? Connecting Indian farmers through an Internet based social network may prove beneficial for farmers in maintaining relations with other stakeholders in agribusiness such as extension workers, February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

scientists, peer groups from different areas as well as their suppliers and buyers. Such websites can act as a link for farmers to showcase or sell their products. Farmers can get connected with different markets nationally as well as internationally. A social networking site will also help farmers to maintain their personal contacts as well as fulfill their information needs about health, education and entertainment. After registering to the website and creating their profile, the farmers can connect with each other by posting videos and blogs as well as information about their farm, such as location and what they grow or to make special announcements. Communities related to crop-protection, sowing, pre-harvest as well as post harvest operations could be floated and farmers can initiate conversation with their fellow farmers. The site could provide useful links with suppliers such as agri-input companies mainly in pesticides, fertilizers, tractors and other agri-related services. The site could also be connected to the researchers/ scientists/extension officials. Banks and other financial institutions can offer information about their services on the websites dealing Crop-specific communities, geographic communities and communities of various groups of farmers based on age, gender and income class can be promoted. Though there are many websites already operational that connect farmers to markets, there has been little effort to socially network the farmer groups. In fact, such websites could be used by various companies to advertise their products as this kind of content sponsorship can help the website generate revenues for its operation. Existing websites could also be linked to these websites and which would increase the knowledge base available to the farmers. A farmer could also share photographs, videos of their successful case studies. In addition to that, a message board can help the farmers to post any messages/news they want to share with others. The following links could be established among the farmers for this site: • The neighbourhood/personal links will link two farmers of the same village or to their relatives • The professional links will connect farmers with similar farming systems and in the same commune group, or with scientists as well as extension officials • Other links will connect farmers separated by larger distance These links can be established for many reasons (neighbours or friends from the past, family members who are based far from them).

Social networking for farmers: The path ahead Social networking is not as easy as it seems to be, as it will be useful only for the farmers who are active Internet users and a major chunk of the farmers will not be benefited by these. But even for the farmers using these tools, we see many challenges in implementation. The first and foremost challenge is the awareness among the farmers and their peer groups. TV, radio and opinion leaders could really help in building awareness. Connecting this site with some unique benefits could help in promotion of this site i.e. providing facilities which are not offered by other IT models. Another challenge is that of speed and connectivity in rural areas, slow speed could hinder many such activities such as audio and video uploads/downloads. Some simple activities such as e-mail as well as blogging could be initiated in the beginning and later

more services can be introduced. Training is one essential area, without which these services could be really useless. Taking help of opinion leaders will be an added advantage and will attract visitors from other communities such as scientists, extension workers; something that will enrich the website’s content. Connecting these communities together who speak different languages is one

big challenge, but this can be overcome by floating communities based on language. The site has to be in Hindi or any other local language. The social network can first be started with some most popular sites in rural areas with the right set of product-service mix. This network building could reap benefits for farmers in the years to come.

References • • • • •

• • • •

Bright, O.(2008); BUZZ: ‘A Spontaneous Market Tool in Rural Market for Financial Products’’; Conference on Marketing to Rural Consumers-Understanding and Tapping the Rural Market Potential held at IIM, Kozhikode, April 3-5,2008., in marketing to Rural Consumers, IIMK publication,7-12. Singh, R.B. Verma, S.K. & Ram S.(2006) ‘A Comparative Study of Market Structures and its Interlocking between Dealers and Farmers in the use of Pesticides in Kanpur District of U.P.’’ Indian Journal of Agricultural Marketing (Conf. Spl.), 20 (3),132 Sikka, B.K., Sharma, M.L., Singh S. & Narula, S.A.; (2005) , “E-Marketing of Apples in Uttaranchal” Conference Proceedings of Indian Society of Agricultural Marketing, Pantnagar, published in Indian Journal of Agricultural Marketing, Vol. 19, No.2, Conference Spl. Narula, S.A., Sharma, N. (2008) “Implementing ICTs in Agribusiness” i4d, September, 20-22 available at www.i4donline.net/September08/September08.pdf Narula S. A., (2008) “ Leveraging ICT to Link Farmers to Markets: A Case of Indian E-Business Models” Paper presented in International Conference on Technology and Innovation in Marketing held at IMT, Ghaziabad, India during 18-19 April, 2008; published in Rajat Gera ( Ed.) “Technology and Innovation in Marketing”, Allied Publishers, New Delhi www.farmfoody.org www.cottoncommunity.com www.blogherald.com/ Internet users in rural India exceed 3.3 million, 16 January 2009, i4d

2009 CTA Photo Competition The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and its partners are creating a multimedia multilingual training kit to support the spread of good participatory mapping practice. In order to promote the examples of participatory mapping practice from around the world, CTA and its partners, have called people from all over the world to send in photographs through which they can share their experiences. The photographs will enrich the information presented in the training kits that the CTA will create. To encourage people to contribute to the initiative, the CTA is organising a photo competition where participants can submit their photographs under 15 different categories. Winner has an opportunity to win up to 900 Euros. Within each category, the best photo will receive a prize of EUR 300. Interested participants can submit up to three photographs under each category. They may submit photos for more than one category but will be eligible to win in a maximum of three categories. To enter the competition, participant has to be a registered user of the PGIS website. The PGIS training kit images will be made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 license. Submitted images will be judged by a jury on relevance to the category, technical excellence, composition, overall impact, and artistic merit. Photographs must be high resolution original files of camera-made digital photos in JPEG, JPG or TIFF formats. Participants need to give following information: (i) title of

photo, (ii) year of photo taken, (iii) place and country of photo taken; (iv) category, (v) short statement explaining how your photograph is representative of the chosen category (max 300 characters) for each photograph. The deadline to submit the photographs is 25 February 2009. The winners will be announced on 31 March 2009. For further details about the competition please visit http://pgis.cta.int/ Category 01 - Capacity Building Category 02 - Attitudes, Behaviours and Ethics Category 03 - Fundamentals of training delivery and facilitation Category 04 - Community Groundwork and Processes Category 05 - Enabling and disabling environments Category 06 - Choice of Participatory Mapping Method based on purpose, environment and resources Category 07 - Technical preparation and Logistics Category 08 - Ground and Sketch Mapping Category 09 - Participatory Scale Mapping and Surveying Category 10 - Participatory 3D Modelling Category 11 - Participatory Mapping using aerial and remote sensed images Category 12 - Introduction to GIS for the Purpose of practicing PGIS Category 13 - Participatory Internet based mapping Category 14 – Documentation Category 15 - Action Planning i4d | February 2009

LIVESTOCKS AND POULTRY SECTOR, MADRAS VETERINARY, COLLEGE CHENNAI, INDIA

Livestock informatics The article proposes the setting up of a Digital Management Information System as a promising strategy of ensuring that all stakeholders of the Indian Livestocks and Poultry sector are able to share information and knowledge effectively

Agriculture is the largest private sector in India, employing and supporting a majority of the rural masses. In India, livestock production system and agriculture are intrinsically linked, dependent on each other, both crucial for overall food security of the nation. The livestock sector plays a vital role in Indian economy and it is an economically important sub-sector of Indian agriculture. The contribution of livestock sector in the arid and semi-arid areas is substantial and it ranges from 70 percent to 40 percent of the agriculture sector. The uniqueness of the sector is that, here, the poor will directly contribute to the nation’s growth instead of getting benefit from growth generated elsewhere. Interestingly, a major part of livestock production is concentrated among the marginal, small and landless agricultural labourers and the income from livestock production system provides stability and acts as an insurance against crop failures, natural calamities, etc. The rural resource poor and disadvantaged farm women play a vital role in livestock production and they will be most benefited if the technological interventions boost growth of this sector. So, any anticipated progress by the application of technological intervention will ensure a balanced development in rural economy particularly by reducing poverty among the economically weaker and resource poor sections of the society.

Strength and weakness of Indian livestock sector

M Murugan Assistant Professor Department of Poultry Science Madras Veterinary College Chennai, India writemurugan@gmail.com

February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

The strength of the Indian livestock sector is it’s overall size. India has the largest livestock population in the world, distributed among 100 million families in around 600,000 villages of rural India. According to the livestock census of 2004, India’s livestocks population stands at 485 million and poultry population stands at 489 million, making it number one in the world in terms of cattle population, second and third in goat and sheep population,

respectively. India stands number one in milk production, fourth in egg production and fifth in poultry meat production. The weakness of the Indian livestock sector is ‘Unit size’. Indian livestock sector is characterized by ‘Production by Masses’ and different production systems from free range to highly intensive. The wide spread of animal farming in different agroclimatic zones is another critical issue in applying technological interventions to increase production and productivity on a sustainable basis.

Rationale and need for integrated ICT application India, being a diverse country in its livestock farming systems and agro-climatic profile, problem arises in accessing and using relevant, timely and locale specific information by people who need it. It is mandatory to complete the product chain from production to consumers’ table to achieve the overall profit per unit of input in different production and processing functions. Here, the scope for applying integrated Information and Communication Technologies is immense especially in livestock and poultry production system as a specific domain. Keeping these facts in mind, it is the need of the hour to work out strategies for applying Integrated ICT application in Livestock and Poultry domain to achieve a composite information and knowledge base.

Concept of integrated ICT application in livestock domain In the right to ‘technological’ information era, Digital Management Information System (D-MIS) is a promising strategy for effective flow of information and knowledge to the different stakeholders of the system and target group. Knowledge Management (KM) and Knowledge Transfer (KT) are two crucial elements

for effective Management Information System. Knowledge Management and Transfer in the livestock and poultry sector can be conceptually explained as follows: • Collation, validation, standardisation and digital documentation of the best package of practices in Livestock and Poultry production, processing, trading and other related processes. • Collect, validate, share, propagate and popularise the knowledge, reliable and useful information/data to enhance productivity and profitability on a sustainable basis • On demand knowledge and information sharing/transfer among the target group • Developing an updated, functional, easy to access and share knowledge and information database for use in effective Management Information System

Structure of digital management information system The core activity can be carried out by Central Livestock and Poultry Data Centre, at a lead institute in Veterinary and Animal Science having necessary infrastructure in ICT application. This centre may be supported by data feeder agencies like state animal husbandry departments, veterinary and animal science universities, research centres, NGOs working in the domain of livestock and poultry, research associations, farm bureaus, etc. Application of integrated ICT can play a vital role in user interfaces - promoting efficiency of collection, validation, documentation, sharing will be high and time and locale specific. The task of flowing knowledge and information to the target group can be easily achieved by establishing an interactive knowledge and information portal cum database by Central Data Centre. It will act as a front end and pivotal point for flow of information and knowledge and to receive the feedback.

Functions of portal in flow of information The portal will act as common platform for the target group with following functions and services in focus: • Open access Educational Resources (OER) in livestock and poultry domain • Online Livestock and Poultry Directory • Online education system/digital learning for capacity building • Online data feeding and survey system • Online Trade links to enable the business process • E-mail query and answer system – Virtual Expert consultancy services • Helpline/Call Centre – for conventional query-answer system by qualified people – Veterinary Communicator (to serve people who do not have access to Internet) • Portal membership registry login system – for continuous update of required information for various groups of people. • Mobile message services – from the Central Data Centre and Interactive portal to provide information to the users. • e-Publishing (e-newsletter, monthly market trend analysis reports, status reports of different farming systems,

•

production and supply level reports, product pricing reports, market intelligence reports, etc.) Career guidance for jobseekers in livestock and poultry domain.

Importance of helpline (Call Centre) One of the major drawbacks of using a portal for knowledge sharing is the lack of access to Internet among a majority of the target/beneficiary group. This can be overcome by setting up call centres manned by qualified staff (Veterinary Communicators) who can make use of the wealth of information in the website and provide callers with the information they need, even if the target group is unable to use the Internet.

Use of mobile technology Since mobile technology, like Short Messaging Services (SMS) are compatible with the Internet, establishing tools with inbuilt support for mobile access will be useful for end users without costing much and vice versa.

Target group of the portal • • • • • •

Veterinary and animal farming entrepreneurs, farmers, traders and related people in core and allied industries Veterinary and Animal science extension workers Students of Veterinary and Animal science Veterinary and Animal Scientists Policy makers of Livestock and Poultry sector Line departments of the state and district administration

Web content profile • • • • • • • • • •

Knowledge base Best package of practices - Livestock and Poultry Farm to Table Process and activity Disease prevention, surveillance and diagnostic service inputs Trade related concepts and principles Expert consultancy services Legislation for domestic market and export, import potential Online resources and training modules Continuing digital learning Open access Educational Resources

Information base • • • • • • • •

Livestock and Poultry directory Trade related information – (Demand, supply, pricing etc.) Buyer and Seller trade leads Market analysis reports Information about Credit facilities and funding agencies Weather Forecast Employment opportunities e-Publishing (e-newsletters, market reports etc)

Specific benefits to various target audience 1.

The livestock and poultry farmers/entrepreneurs will have access to information and knowledge about best package of practices, sourcing and supply of critical inputs, best i4d | February 2009

deals and places for marketing in their produce, processing and marketing functions thereby they can improve the productivity and profitability The traders etc. involved in domestic and export marketing can get relevant market intelligence reports, prices, market potential and cost analysis reports to leverage their marketing function Veterinary practitioners will have the possibility of updating their knowledge and specific information through continuing digital learning process Veterinary extension agents can make use of this portal as information and knowledge base and it will act as single information delivery system to address the farmers’ queries. Veterinary students can use of this open access Educational Resource for capacity building. The portal can be used as a powerful tool for to help prepare for their career too. Line departments can have access to vital livestock information and statistics, technologies, survey reports and related links to enhance strategies for their project plans.

Constraints Though the development and use of the portal is invaluable in terms of benefits, there are some constraints also in developing and using the portal: • Access to Internet in rural areas/target group • Computer literacy and language skill of the target group • Time bound, needs based and usable web content in the subject • Continuous updating of content especially time sensitive data like prices, demand and supply, disease prevalence, preventive measures, etc. • Sustainable maintenance and monitoring of the portal cum database However, working out realistic and wholesome strategies and linkages between different stakeholders of the portal project and using flexible user interfaces, the above mentioned constraints can be successfully overcome. In total, the interactive portal cum database will act as efficient single point delivery system for knowledge and information in the format of Digital Management Information System, to achieve the dream of right to technological information in livestock and poultry domain.

eSagu: An IT based personalised agriculture extension system eSagu is a web-based personalised agro-advisory system which uses ICT to provide expert/scientific advice to Indian farmers to improve agricultural productivity. ‘Sagu’ means cultivation in Telugu language. The initiative is a joint research project of Media Lab Asia and IIIT Hyderabad (Indian Institute of Information Technology). eSagu aims to increase farm productivity by delivering high quality personalised advice in a timely manner to each farm at the farmers’ door-steps without the farmers asking any question. The advice is provided at a regular basis starting from sowing to harvesting which reduces the cost of cultivation, increases the farm productivity as well as it’s quality. Extracting full benefits of the available ICT tools (Internet, database and digital photography), in eSagu, instead of visiting the fields in person, the agricultural scientists deliver their advice on the basis of the information received about the crops through digital photographs and other information. The project is currently serving 6 districts of Andhra Pradesh, India. The major crops covered under the project are cotton, February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

chillies, rice, groundnut, castor, red gram and fish. The eSagu system was among the finalists for the Stockholm Challenge Awards 2008 and has also been the winner of ‘ The Manthan Award 2007’ for India’s Best e-Content for Development. Apart from these, it was also the winner of the CSI Nihilent e-Governance Award, 2006 and has been

recognised as one of the international latest novel Internet applications in the ‘Innovative Application Case Study 2006’ by a not-for-profit think tank for the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs in Taipai (on behalf of Institute of Information Industry, Taiwan). For more information on eSagu, visit http://www.esagu.in/esagu/index.html

MKRISHITM,

TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES (TCS), INDIA

mKRISHI based grape farming TM

www.tcs.com

Using cellphones which transmit information from sensors deployed in grape farms, TCS has set up an agro advisory system where farmers can directly link with experts for nutrient, irrigation and pest management

Arun K Pande Head, TCS Innovation Labs Mumbai, India Arun.pande@tcs.com Subhash Arve Progressive Grape Farmer Borgaon, Maharashtra, India subhasharve@rediffmail.co.in

Introduction mKRISHITM is a TCS innovation which is based on wireless and sensor technology. The purpose of this innovation is to bridge the gap between the farmer and the expert. mKRISHITM was deployed in Borgaon village, Maharashtra, India on a field trial basis for grape farmers. Mobile phones with mKRISHI TM application were distributed to farmers. They made queries in local language through mobile phones and received personalised advice in the same language from Rallis (a Tata company). The farmers were able to read the advice on their mobile phones. During nine months of field trial, we observed that farmers found the service very useful, specially when they needed expert advice during critical stages of grape growing.

Genesis of the project Grape growing requires proper nutrient and pest management to get better quality yield. ICT tools have an important role to play in nutrient and pest management of the grapes. This farming initiative started with a meeting of Arun Pande of TCS with Subhash Arve in Borgaon village. The weather, for example, moisture, temperature and cloud cover impact the grape crop since these conditions could lead to pest attack. Also, the knowledge of leaf wetness helps the expert to advise the farmers regarding the pesticide spray. Similarly, knowledge of soil moisture at different depth, enable the experts to advise the grape farmers about nutrient and irrigation management. To increase yield and reduce the cost of grape cultivation, it was felt that the farmer should be able to make a query specific to his situation and the expert should be able to provide personalised advice. TCSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mKRISHITM, a Mobile Based Agro Advisory System, was conceived to

address the above need. As part of the mKRISHITM solution, the farmer uses mobile phone to send query, transmit fertilizer and pesticide application data and receive the advice and information in local language from the expert.

Experience Grape farmers from Borgaon and nearby villages were invited to discuss their needs. It was found that among farmersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; primary concerns were pest attacks during uncertain weather. They frequently wanted advice on growth hormones during berry formation. The knowledge of weather forecast in their village was quite important for them. Besides advice on growing grapes, farmers wanted to get good prices for their produce. Automatic weather station with weather, soil and leaf wetness sensors was installed. (Figure 1) The above set up was connected to a wireless modem to send the dynamic weather and soil information to the expert

Figure 1: Weather station i4d | February 2009

over a cellular network. The camera of a mobile phone was used to send high resolution pictures of the crop to the expert. This way, the expert could get the farmer specific information about soil, crop and farming practices. This enabled the Rallis experts to give personalised advice to the farmer. Farmers, with few hours of training, learnt to use the mKRISHITM application on a mobile phone (Figure 2). Data from the installed sensors was periodically transmitted to the server and viewed by the expert (Figure 3) while responding to farmerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s query. During field trial, the experts received a variety of queries from the farmers. The queries were on subjects such as Mealy bugs, Powdery Mildew, Stem Borer, chemicals to be used after pruning, maturity of stem, sugar percentage of raisin, berry hardening, etc. Farmers were able to click the photographs of the crop and send them along with the queries. Farmers felt that they could approach experts whenever they faced problems or had queries. This was Figure 2: mKRISHITM application on mobile phones felt as the biggest impact of the mKRISHITM system. It connected farmers and experts. The experts could disseminate their system is through application software (mKRISHITM Client) knowledge to farmers easily and in their own language. running on a mobile phone. The software design required the interface to be in Indian languages and it should be possible Challenges faced for farmers to make their queries in Indian languages. Experts The challenges faced during the field trial could be classified into interface to mKRISHITM system is through the Expert Console. three categories, namely (1) Technical (2) Farmer and Expert Since experts were not conversant in typing in vernacular Interface (3) Operational issues. languages, Electronic Pen and softkey interfaces were provided Technical Challenges: The solution requires installation and to send the advice to farmers in Indian languages commissioning of Automatic Weather station, sensors, battery, Operational Issues: Farmers frequently forgot to upload fertilizer solar panel and a wireless modem. During monsoon, battery did and pesticide history. Experts refer to this history before giving not charge fully thus impacting the data transfer from field to a advice on pesticide and fertilizer application. A local person was server stationed in Thane, Maharashtra. The modem had to be deputed to provide support to the farmers and ensure that they designed and redesigned frequently to ensure minimum power upload required data through mobile phones and their queries consumption and smooth data flow from sensors to server. were answered satisfactorily. Farmer and Expert Interface: Farmerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interface to mKRISHITM

Outcome Every farmer participating in the experiment and those who are indirectly participating in this service, are utilizing the services of the experts to receive advice. The local weather prediction graph is provided to each farmer on his mobile phone. The farmers find this service very useful. In fact, farmers in Borgaon region postponed pruning in September since they got information on local weather forecast. The farmers who were not aware of the possibility of rains carried out the pruning. Their crop was affected by pest and the damages ran into crores of rupees. The farmers using mKRISHITM did not suffer this damage.

Road ahead

Figure 3: Soil moisture sensor February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

Since grape farmers found the service very useful, attempt is being made to offer the service on a commercial basis. In addition to agro advisory services, farmers suggested the inclusion of more services such as Mandi price, Top up loan and Crop insurance. They also would like to have advice on water management and irrigation planning. Discussions are on with farmers, progressive farmers and Grape Grower Association to see how all the above services can be made available to farmers on a commercial basis. Â&#x201E;

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF AGRICULTURE RESEARCH MANAGEMENT (NAARM), HYDERABAD, INDIA

IT managment in agriculture www.naarm.ernet.in

To create a workforce of IT executives with an agriculture background, NAARM has launched a course on IT Management in Agriculture. The course is intended to facilitate deeper penetration of ICT in remote agrarian communities

D S K Rao Global IT & Innovation Consultant dskrao65@gmail.com

The National Academy of Agriculture Research Management (NAARM) was established in 1976, at Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, to fulfill the important need for an institution of management in agricultural research and education. NAARM is one of the constituent institutes of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi, the apex body of the country for promoting agricultural research, education and extension education. The journey of about 32 years has been traversed with a unique distinction of developing capacity building, research, policy support and consultancy to enhance these four capacities of the National Agriculture Research System(NARS). During this period the academy has the record of organising over 800 learning and capacity building programmes for more than 20,000 scientists and policy makers from the NARS in India and other developing countries in Asia and Africa. The academy has conducted 84 Foundation Courses for Agricultural Research Service (FOCARS) for the newly recruited entry level scientists of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), over 400 Senior Level Programmes and Refresher Courses and about 30 International Programmes. The academy has also conducted several tailor made off-campus programmes on demand. The Academy’s research has helped in the formulation of Information Technology policy for NARS, distance training and development of interactive multimedia packages in agricultural education, decision support systems, GIS and IT applications in agricultural rural development. The Academy is located in the Rajendranagar area of Hyderabad, which is considered the hub for Agricultural Institutions NAARM is surrounded

by Acharya NG Ranga Agricultural University, MANAGE and NIRD. Spread over 50 hectares of lush green land with all modern facilities within the campus, NAARM provides an ideal environment for academic excellence. The facilities available on the campus include lecture halls with modern audio-visual aids, Wi-Fi enabled broad band Internet service with access both in class rooms and hostels, in-campus Hospital and a well-equipped library. NAARM also has a digital library which has all the publications in digital format. As member of the consortium for e-resources in Agriculture, NAARM has direct access to over 2000 journals from EBSCO, CSIRO, Springer and Open J-Gate. Under the dynamic leadership of it’s Director, Dr S M Ilyas and Joint Director, Dr N H Rao, NAARM has set upon itself the challenge of becoming a deemed University over a period of time to address the capacity building requirements in the Agriculture space. With support from DG and DDGs of ICAR, NAARM has set itself a goal to start fully residential One Year Post Graduate Diploma courses as a part of capacity building in the XI Five Year Plan which will be followed by MBA and Doctoral programmes. In its endeavour to widen access to higher technical education to students with an agriculture background students, NAARM has decided to start off with one year Post Graduate Diploma in Information Technology Management in Agriculture (PGD-ITMA) to create IT bridge professionals for increased agriculture productivity through usage of Information Technology systems in Agriculture. Strategically, NAARM felt that for a meaningful industry interface and a curriculum that’s in sync with the current industry requirements, the services of an industry expert needs to be hired. The i4d | February 2009

author of this article is engaged to fulfill this role in initiating the PGD-ITMA course with reference to curriculum design, industry interface, external faculty identification, internship locations, etc. Accordingly, the curriculum for PGD-ITMA is crafted carefully by involving forty industry champions drawn from Private Industry, Agri arms of leading Financial Institutions, NGOs, Academic Institutions and Consultants besides Policy makers in Government organisations. A two-day brain storming session was organised to elicit views of the Industry Champions on the proposed curriculum and usefulness of the proposed course. The feedback was very encouraging with most of the participants volunteering to offer Internship to the students in their fourth trimester!

Participants at the Brain Storming Session for PGD-ITMA curriculum finalisation

The Academy has Dr D Rama Rao as the Program Director for this PGD-ITMA course. He is supported by the full time faculty of NAARM along with expert external faculty drawn from best of the Industry. The admissions to this course were conducted online with students from agriculture background across India applying for the course. The Written Test, GDs and Interviews were conducted at five locations in India, namely Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Hyderabad on 28th and 29th of September 2008. Twenty four students from across India made it through the selection process including six girls and joined the first batch of

February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

the One Year Post Graduate Diploma in Information Technology Management in Agriculture(PGD-ITMA). History was created when the first batch was inaugurated on 11th November 2008 at NAARM. The students were provided with free laptops which are Wi-Fi enabled and ushered into state-of-art class rooms with their course content hosted on eLearning LMS systems.

PGD-ITMA (2008-2009) The One Year Post Graduate Diploma in Information Technology Management in Agriculture(PGD-ITMA) is a four trimester fully residential programme with a focus on IT management in Agriculture for developing a competent cadre of IT executives from an agriculture background to meet the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growing requirements for trained personnel in the field of Agriculture IT management for sustainable livelihoods and increased agriculture productivity. The rapid developments in Information Technology and its use in increasing the productivity in various fields and the need to apply these technologies in Agriculture has necessitated this course. The course is structured to create bridge professionals who are more Information and Systems specialists than computer programmers. The PGD-ITMA would be a one-year programme comprising four trimesters, each of three months. First three trimesters would be conducted at the Academy. The fourth trimester would be devoted to internship to be pursued by the students at the identified organisations. The outcome of this course would be twenty four IT management professionals with an agriculture background drawn from across India who would be acting as the bridge professionals to take ICT benefits to the farmers at remote places. With government in the process of setting up 100,000 Common Services Centres (CSCs) all over India and identifying Agriculture-based services as one of the important offerings at these CSCs, it is essential to have these professionals to fill the slots. It is envisaged that a minimum of around 5000 similar skilled bridge professionals would be needed to fill the present gap to ensure meaningful propagation of ICT benefits to the remote agrarian populations for sustainable livelihoods. NAARM has taken the first step to fill this gap. Coupled with this is the boom in large retail chains and focus on food processing industries which require high level of consolidation and thereby integrated ICT systems for optimised operations. The demand for ICT trained agriculture professionals in these sectors is very large. Agri financing & Micro-financing is the basis for ensuring agriculture growth on a sustainable basis. Monitoring this aspect has become a specialised activity with large scale deployment of ICT tools to not only oversee the credit aspect, but also the linked agriculture production and the related marketing chains. PGD-ITMA students are expected to play crucial roles in the above mentioned areas after completion of their course. Â&#x201E;

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Bytes for All... Slumdog Millionaire has ICT4D link

ICT4D’s Godfather and first computer

Slumdog Millionaire has ICT4D link, says Wikipedia. The author of the book on which the film is based, Vikas Swarup who wrote the book Q&A, said that he was inspired by the ‘Hole in the Wall’ project which installed a computer in a Delhi slum. Young children taught themselves about the use of computers without intervention from the experimenters. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/13093 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_and_A

There is erroneous belief in India, indeed elsewhere too, that e-governance started in mid-1990s with the advent of the Internet in public domain. In case e-governance is application of ICTs to governance, then it was born in early 1950s when computer was used for preparing India’s Second Five Year Plan (1952-57). If, however, e-governance means digital governance, as Americans and now some British scholars (e.g. Dunleavy et al.) are fond of calling it, then digital governance was born in India in 1956, as you say. To clarify these issues I wrote a paper which may be relevant here. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1328057.1328127

Tux Math... from a five-year-old (sometimes impatient) teacher

Bangla Wiki

Aren, a five-year old boy explains what Tux Math is all about. He manages to find his way around simple sums, though he is not yet learning arithmetic of that kind in school. Blame it on trial-and-error, and the fun spirit that games bring in. Of course, this is Free Software!

To better promotion of Wiki and Open Content philosophy and building awareness among Bengali all over the world, BanglaWiki group lunched a community portal where any one can join and post their wiki and open content related news, blogs, discussion, copy left photos and videos.

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=m-0StLDHYGI&feature=channel_page

http://banglawiki.ning.com

Searching architect of digital Bangladesh

Wikipedia seeks more contributors from India In a bid to bolster user interface, the sixth most popular website in India and the fifth most popular in the world, Wikipedia is ushering in WikiAcademy, a connect between Wiki and its users. The aim: Garner as much contributions for the site from users. With close to 277 million users visiting it every month, Wikipedia needs more contributors or participants from India, and also the world. Sue Gardner and Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, were in the city to promote the WikiAcademy, started recently by Kiruba, founder of the Knowledge foundation. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/13006

The term ‘Digital Bangladesh’ has become very important after the new government in power. How to design and who will be the architect of digital Bangladesh? The general mass is raising the questions. There is a great difference between an architect of buildings and that of digital infrastructures. Not the bricks but the digital networks are the main contents of a digital country. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/13058

Israeli offensive, cyberspace A friend wrote: I wanted to forward an example of information activism that came across my email today that is related to the Israeli

Infoactivism: Some blog posts from info-activism campaigners Info activism, a crucial part of human rights advocacy -- Kristin Joy Antin http://www.informationactivism.org/node/39

People’s video is still the effective tool - Jola Diones Mamangun, The Philippines http://www.informationactivism.org/node/38

There’s so much of information -- Jessica Dheere, Beirut http://www.informationactivism.org/node/37

Wikileaks is the absolute most important project on the globe -- Jacob Appelbaum http://www.informationactivism.org/node/36

Info-activism can help people to make informed judgments - Elizabeth Eagen http://www.informationactivism.org/node/34

Fighting prejudice against sex-workers - Chan Man Wai (HK, SAR) http://www.informationactivism.org/node/33

It helps to bring the information across - Aung Myo Thein, (Burma/Myanmar) http://www.informationactivism.org/node/32

Knowing you can help will make people want to help – Ana Keselashvili, Georgia http://www.informationactivism.org/node/31

We need cheaper mobile communications for learners – Joy Oliver, South Africa http://www.informationactivism.org/node/30

i4d | February 2009

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Bytes for All... Some useful links UAE-ICT HEALTH launches region’s first Integrated Health Information Exchange Network. http://www.albawaba.com/en/countries/ UAE/239755

sustainable development?

Egypt to fortify ties with India at NASSCOM`s Leadership Forum 2009. http://tinyurl.com/chfoo8

D-content.In

http://tinyurl.com/c2peb4

SEED Initiative website at http://www.seedinit.org

http://dCONTENT.in

Sambodhi Research and Kaarak. http://www.sambodhi.co.in

http://www.webnewswirecom/node/448605

Building Assistive Technology Services.

ICT per se can’t help Ghana - Prof. Dzidonu.

http://tinyurl.com/ckcvur

Angola: Development of ICT boosted Science and Technology sector. http://tinyurl.com/cjl394

Tanzania: Posts body in uphill task to survive in face of ICT development. http://www.ippmedia.com/ ippguardian/2009/01/21/130026.html

Local Governance: Reaching Services to the Underserved. http://tinyurl.com/clys33

2th National Conference on e-Governance on 12-13 February 2009 in Goa. http://tinyurl.com/ckl5oz

Sri Lanka: 2009 Year of ICT-A new wave begins (Lakshitha Jayaweera).

India sanitation portal Sanitation has traditionally not got the kind of attention that drinking water supply has been given.

http://www.sundaytimes.lk/090125/It/it400.html

http://sanitationindia.org/

Malawi wants to give Internet to all http://tinyurl.com/dhlz5q

Department of Drinking Water Supply, Government of India. http://ddws.gov.in/

ICT development key to economic growth http://tinyurl.com/arm3fn

Fouad Bajwa’s south Asian blog to cover things from a personal perspective. http://www.askbajwa.com

Panos Radio South Asia. http://www.panosradiosouthasia.org

An entrepreneurial, innovative idea locally-driven with potential for

http://www.webnewswire.com/node/448605

Sri Lanka: Year of ICT and English http://www.island.lk/2009/01/19/features11.html

India R& D 2009- ICT Innovations Opens

http://tinyurl.com/cdteze

India R&D 2009-ICT Innovations Opens January end 2009.

Solution Exchange, UN initiative in India, harnessing power of communities of practice to help attain national dvpt goals and MDGs.

Community Radio Station in Mhaswad, Maharashtra. http://tinyurl.com/avd96v

‘The World is far ahead of Nigeria in IT devt’. http://www.vanguardngr.com/content/ view/26202/51/

ICT can help to improve accountability, transparency and good governance in the public sector. http://tinyurl.com/btf5bt

Enhancing employability of India’s IT workforce NASSCOM estimates only 25 percent of technical graduates and approx 15 percent of other graduates are employable by the rapidly growing IT and ITeS cos. http://tinyurl.com/b4ufeq

The Boom From The Bottom India’s aspiring poor will help it grow through the credit storm. http://tinyurl.com/7cj34r

How technology is widening the richpoor gap.

http://solutionexchange-un.net.in

http://tinyurl.com/7sd48s

Slumdog’s inspiring story forces many to look at India’s poor.

Computers or classrooms? The role of the teacher is restricted.

http://tinyurl.com/dyqvxh

http://tinyurl.com/6cp77a

offensive in Gaza. The maps are produced by a group of activists and others who first came together to map the destruction of Lebanon in 2006. They are asking that we distribute them widely, as this was a way in which Lebanese were able to begin to change the mainstream media conversation around the 2006 offensive. I hope that you would not mind if I post them here until the Wiki is up and running. Please forward them to anyone who might be interested. Kharita means ‘map’ in Arabic.

Bytes for All: www.bytesforall.org or www.bytesforall.net Bytes for All Readers Discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ bytesforall_readers To subscribe: bytesforall_readers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Bytes for All Discussion summary compiled by: Frederick Noronha, India, fred@bytesforall.org

http://kharita.wordpress.com February 2009 | www.i4donline.net

India

Knowledge resources on agriculture InDG - India Development Gateway’s Agriculture vertical InDG is a national initiative supported by the Department of Information Technology, Government of India and implemented by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Hyderabad. The initiative targets specific information needs of the country in the domain of rural and social development. The ‘Gateway’ has been developed as a single-window access to information and services, with the specific objective of reaching the ‘unreached’ rural communities of India, especially women and the poor. All content in this portal is available in six languages: English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi. The content hosted on the website is segregated in the following categories: Primary Education, e-Governance, Health, Rural Energy and Agriculture. With participation from the National Agriculture Research System (NARS) and Line departments, the Agriculture vertical carries essential information under various Subheads, namely: Crop Production Techniques: Educates

farmers about the production techniques for different crops, a special section on technologies for the North Eastern parts of India which has different agroclimatic conditions, new crop varieties being developed, irrigation systems, agriengineering technologies, tissue culture and also food safety standards and Codex. Animal Husbandry: Focuses on the breeds, availability, feeding, breeding and disease management of dairy animals, poultry, goats, sheep, pigs and rabbits Fisheries: Information about commercial production of freshwater fishes (carps, prawns), freshwater pearl culture, ornamental fish farming, market intelligence of marine fishes as also URLs of the national level institutes on Fisheries. Farm-based Enterprises: Information on value added enterprises like Sericulture, Mushroom production, vermicomposting, agri-business and rural technologies. Best Practices: This section informs our agriculturists about the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), Precision Farming and a section dedicated to innovations made by farmers.

Policies and Schemes: Information about the Government’s policies and schemes for the farming community. Credit and Insurance: This section informs farmers about the Banks in the Agricultural sector and their credit and crop insurance schemes and also the Kisan Credit Cards. Discussion Forums: The discussion forum is a space where farmers can hold discussions and share information on issues related to agriculture. Related Websites: This section is a compendium of links to the Ministry of Agriculture, State Agriculture Departments, other related Ministries and Departments, State Agriculture Universities, ICAR Institutes, Commodity Boards and other related National and International Organisations and agri-related portals from India. The comprehensive information provided by the portal in different Indian languages is a boon for the e-enabled farmers in India who will have access to information from all over the country at their fingertips especially after the nationwide roll out of wireless broadband.

aAQUA (Almost All Questions Answered) Developed by the Developmental Informatics Lab at IIT Bombay, India - the aAQUA system was launched in 2003. It is a collaborative effort by IIT-B, Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) at Baramati and Vigyan Ashram, Pabal in Maharashtra. The aAQUA system is an attempt to build a bridge between advanced technology and the farmer at the grassroots of Indian society who don’t always have access to expert advice. In July 2005, aAQUA was awarded the Manthan Gold Medal Award for ‘India’s Best e-Content Practices’ under the e-Inclusion category. The dynamic system evolves with the needs of its users and also functions as a corpus of information for researchers. Farmers can pose questions with the help of computer operators about their crops or livestock and experts respond to the queries. The portal maintains a respository of the questions and answers which can be assessed by anyone in future too. Some features of aAQUA are as follows: • The portal offers an online digital library which displays

images related to crop diseases, farmers can choose the appropriate photo and then look for control measures • The portal also employs a multilingual meaning based search engine that allows users to search for content in their own language and view documents in their language irrespective of the language of the original document • Users can search for content by clicking on keywords rather than typing text in a search box • A price information service provides updated prices of every agricultural commodity in different markets of Maharashtra to the farmer. To make information more accessible to farmers content delivery through other media is also being experimented on such as, telephony extensions, FM radio and mobile SMS (Short Messaging Service). There are plans of creating statewise portals of aAQUA, quality standards for exports and translation of content into various Indian languages. i4d | February 2009

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on Africa 27-29 May 2009 eLearning Africa 2009 Dakar, Senegal

25-26 May 2009 National Conference on Open Source Software (NCOSS) Mumbai, Maharashtra

http://www.elearning-africa.com

http://ncoss.cdacmumbai.in

21-22 April 2009 Energy Efficiency World 2009 Johannesburg, South Africa

Japan

http://www.terrapinn.com/2009/eeza/

Australia

24-28 August 2009 The 3rd International Symposium on the Environmental Physiology of Ectotherms and Plants Tsukuba

23-26 March 2009 Green House 2009 Perth, Western Australia

http://www.nias.affrc.go.jp/anhydrobiosis/isepep3/ index.html

http://www.greenhouse2009.com

Jordan

15-18 November 2009 2009 Asia Pacific Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect Perth, Western Australia http://www.napcan.org.au

20-25 March 2010 World Congress of Internal Medicine Melbourne, VIC http://www.wcim2010.com.au/

Europe 12-13 March 2009 International Conference on eGovernment & eGovernance Ankara, Turkey http://www.icegov.info/venue.html

9-11 March 2009 International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED) 2009, Valencia, Spain http://www.iated.org/inted2009

13-15 March 2009 4th Global Conference: Cybercultures - Exploring Critical Issues Salzburg, Austria http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/Cyber/ cybercultures/c4/cfp.htm

http://www.greenenergysummit.com Febuary 2009 | www.i4donline.net

http://www.terrapinn.com/2009/asiapower/

Thailand 5-7 March 2009 Education and Development Conference 2008 Bangkok http://www.tomorrowpeople.org/index. php?option=com_content&task=view&id=42&Item id=93

20-23 May 2009 World Renewable Energy Congress 2009 - Asia Region (WREC) Bankok http://www.thai-exhibition.com/entech

United Arab Emirates

22-24 April 2009 Interactive Mobile and Computer Aided Learning, IMCL2009 Amman, Jordan http://www.imcl-conference.org/

Malaysia 15-17 June 2009 First Global Business Summit Conference Kuala Lumpur http://gsbms.com

6-9 July 2009 6th International Conference on IT in Asia 2009 Kuching, Sarawak http://www.cita09.org

Singapore 16-19 June 2009 CommunicAsia 2009 Singapore Expo

17-19 April 2009 3rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on ICTD2009 Doha, Qatar http://www.ictd2009.org

United States 22-27 March 2009 Prevention of HIV/AIDS Keystone, Colorado http://www.keystonesymposia.org/9x3

1-4 April 2009 The 34th Annual Community Radio Conference Portland, Oregon http://www.nfcb.org/conference/ communityradioconference.jsp

28-30 October 2009 International Conference on Information Technology (ICIT 2009) Chicago http://www.waset.org/wcset09/chicago/icit/

http://www.communicasia.com/

United Kingdom knowledge for change

25-27 March 2009 Gender and Education Association International Conference London http://www.ioe.ac.uk/fps/genderconference09

India 3-7 March 2009 Green Energy Summit Bangalore, Karnataka

30 Marchâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;3 April 2009 12th Annual Asia Power & Energy Congress Raffles City Convention Centre

4 - 6 August 2009 New Delhi, India www.eINDIA.net.in

29-31 March 2009 Governance of New Technologies: The Transformation of Medicine, IT and IP University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/conference.asp

IN-FACT

Institutional credit in Indian agriculture Recognising the importance of agriculture sector in India’s development, the Government of India and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have played a vital role in creating a broad-based institutional framework for catering to the increasing credit requirements of the sector. In the Approach Paper to the Eleventh Five Year Plan, the Government has set a target of 4 per cent for the agriculture sector within the overall GDP growth target of 9 per cent. To foster growth in this sector the Government has always been proactive in supporting farmers with development of new (HYVs, saline resistant, drought resistant) crop varieties, as well as sharing knowledge about agricultural practices and best practices, and financial support, to name a few. Post independence, India has seen a rapid growth in the spread of agricultural finance institutions in the country, particularly after banks were nationalised. The share of institutional credit, which was little over 7 per cent in 1951, increased manifold to over 66 per cent in 1991. In this issue of i4d effort has been made to look at the technical side of agriculture – e-Agriculture. The institutional credit system, though not directly related to e-Agriculture, does supplement and complement the agriculture sector in India. The In-Fact page tries to look at the agricultural credit scenario in India so that a holistic picture of agriculture can emerge for the readers.

Institutional credit to Indian agriculture sector Year

Co-op Banks

1 1985-86 1986-87 1987-88 1988-89 1989-90 1990-91 1991-92 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 1995-96 1996-97 1997-98 1998-99 1999-2000 2000-01 2001-02 2002-03 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07*

2 3,874 4,207 4,420 4,851 5,082 3,408 5,800 9,378 10,117 9,406 10,479 11,944 14,085 15,916 18,363 20,801 23,604 23,716 26,959 31,424 39,404 33,174

Share per cent 3 55 52 52 53 52 39 52 62 61 50 48 45 44 43 40 39 38 34 31 25 22 22

Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) 4 – – – – – – 596 831 977 1,083 1,381 1,684 2,040 2,538 3,172 4,219 4,854 6,070 7,581 12,404 15,223 15,170

Share per cent 5 – – – – – – 5 5 6 6 6 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 8 10

Commercial Bank 6 3,131 3,809 4,009 4,233 4,719 5,438 4,806 4,960 5,400 8,255 10,172 12,783 15,831 18,443 24,733 27,807 33,587 39,774 52,441 81,481 1,25859 1,00,999

Share per cent 7 45 48 48 47 48 61 43 33 33 44 46 48 50 50 53 53 54 57 60 65 70 68

Total 8 7,005 8,016 8,429 9,084 9,801 8,846 11,202 15,169 16,494 18,744 22,032 26,411 31,956 36,897 46,268 52,827 62,045 69,560 86,981 1,25,309 1,80,486 1,49,349

Percent increase 9 – 14 5 8 8 -10 27 35 9 14 18 20 21 15 25 14 17 12 25 44 44 -

* : up to December 2006. Note: Commercial Banks and RRBs were clubbed together up to 1990-91. Source: Economic Survey and NABARD various issues.

i4d | February 2008

5th

Watch Out For

India's Largest ICT Event 4 - 6 August 2009 | New Delhi, India

www.eINDIA.net.in

Meet Global Experts on the ICT Movement

Important Dates

Avail Exclusive Networking Opportunities Share a Unique Knowledge Platform of ICT Stakeholders Exhibit and Launch the Latest Developments in ICT Collaborate with National and International ICT Practitioners Get Recognition for Original Initiatives and Much More!!!

Organisers

knowledge for change

Co-organiser

Department of Information Technology Ministry of Communications & IT Government of India

Supporting Partners

速

Call for paper: Open now Submission of Abstracts: 15th April Notice of Selection: 15th May Submission of Final Paper: 30th June

Important Links

Even Website: www.eINDIA.net.in Abstract Submission: papers@eINDIA.net.in

For exhibition and sponsorship enquiries, contact: Siddharth Verma, Mobile: +91-9811561645 Email: siddharth@csdms.in For further information visit us at www.eindia.net.in or write to us at info@eindia.net.in