IT: Can it play a role in the agricultural fields?

By Frederick Noronha

IT, or the field of software solutions where Indian
skills are increasingly being recognised globally, could yield rich crops in
agricultural too, as recent experiences from diverse areas indicate.

Networking various official initiatives is the a government DACNET, a plan
of the Ministry of Agriculture's Department of Agriculture and Cooperation
(DAC) to take E-Governance to the directorates, attached offices and
subordinate offices and field units.

Users of the DACNET portal include a whole lot of agri-institutions from
across India. It is located on the Internet at http://dacnet.nic.in/

These include the Agricultural Marketing Information Network, the National
Horticulture Board, and a whole lot of other official agencies.

Recently, one story that made the news is attempts by the ICT group to link
farmers across the country, specially in some states, with 'e-choupals', or
computer-based networks that gives them information relevant to their
agricultural operations.

"(Due to poor access to information) the farmer gets trapped into low
risk-taking ability, low productivity, low margins and poor returns,"
arguesITC Limited India chief executive of agri-business S.Sivakumar. He
says ITC's plan would create both "shareholder value and social good".

Some 1400 village-level kiosks have already been set up, and more are being
added at the rate of four to five per day across India, Sivakumar says.

The Rs 7500 million ITC group model could give farmers access to the
Internet to leverage transmission capabilities and access market data.

The company's target is eventually to have 50,000 choupals to cover 200,000
Indian villages which means covering one-fifth of the country.

With this infrastructure, ITC targets Rs 20,000 million by the year 2005
from its international exports. Such figures would however need to be seen
against the need for getting a fair price for agricultural produce.

Says Richa Kumar, a researcher from the Massachussettes Institute of
Technology studying how IT can promote development: "I am leaving to start
my research on the e-choupals...."

Expat Indian engineers and scientists are also giving a boost to such
initiatives, as is a wide range of agri-links built at the website
http://indusscitech.net/agriculture.htm

The Agricultural Gateway to India is a web site managed by Dr N. Sandhya
Shenoy of Hyderabad in collaboration with the AIM (Agricultural Instruction
Media) Lab of the University of Illinois. It is a very comprehensive site
located at http://web.aces.uiuc.edu/aim/diglib/india/

Indian Agri BusinessPvt Ltd has this portal giving information to farmers
etc www.agriwatch.com and ther eare other initiatives at
www.Indiaagronet.com

There is also a Directory of The Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), INDIA
developed by National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM),
Hyderabad and maintained at University. of Illinois Urbana Champaign.

The Krishi Vigyan Kendras are the Farm Science Centres established at the
district level which provide the vocational location specific training to
the farmers, farm women, farm youth and the extension personnel.

Besides this, attempts to give agriculture an IT-boost include sites dealing
with fertilizers (www.fertindia.com), the Indian Council of Agricultural
Research (www.nic.in/icar), and initiatives from jute manufacturers, food
technology researchers (www.cftri.org), the silk board (www.silkboard.com)
and the National Botanical Research Institute (www.nbri.org).

Other sites offering links and information come from the Department of
Biotechnology (www.nic.in/dbt), ministry of water resources
(www.nic.in/mowr), the Coconut Development Board (coconutboard.nic.in),
Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Co Ltd (www.mahyco.com), Punjab State Agri
Marketing Board (mandiboard.nic.in), West Bengal's Tea Board (tea.nic.in)
and others.

Recently, Jharkhand announced plans for hi-tech 'haats' that, they said,
would push farmer uplift.

Each of these marketplaces is expected to have a computer centre connected
to computers in other centres of the state through a wide area network. The
goal: to help farmers sell their products -- at the best price -- directly
to the buyers without going through a middleman.

Individuals have also been taking up the task. A V Narayanaswami (42), a
coffee planter from Wayanad Kerala concerned about the region's farm sector
woes has put together a huge data collection currently runs into over
150,000 Web pages in more than 300 modules.

The database covers the state's farm potential, the new norms of production,
packaging, marketing and certification taking effect at the global level,
the major players in the area of multilateral negotiations, the kind of
expert services available to farmers and more.

Vikram Vyas of Jaipur has written a software called
Jal-Chitra, to predict water levels in drought-prone rural areas.

The Centre for Alternative Agricultural Media (CAAM) of Shivaram Pailoor in
Northern Karnataka focuses on farmer friendly communication systems.

It aims to promote alternative efforts in agricultural communication, bridge
the communication gap between farmers and scientists/government, set up a
library on alternative agriculture and alternative agricultural
communication, and maintain a website and publish an e-bulletin.

Prof Kenneth Keniston, a knowledgeable source who has been studying
ICT-for-development projects in India for some time now says: "I am hopeful
about the potentials of ITs for development, but I urge caution. I am not
convinced that ITs are invariably, or even usually, the best answer to
poverty, injustice, illness, inequality, discrimination, hunger, corruption
and exploitation...."

But, he disagrees with views of people like Bill Gates "overstates his
point" when he says that poor people need medicine and not computers.

"The challenge is to learn whether, if, when, and how information
technologies of all kinds can be the most cost-effective means to help
ordinary people meet their basic needs and claim their fundamental rights,"
argues Keniston. (ENDS)
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Frederick Noronha (FN) | http://www.fredericknoronha.net
Freelance Journalist | http://www.bytesforall.org
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http://linuxinindia.pitas.com | http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks
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On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 23:43:13 +0530 (IST), "Frederick Noronha \(FN\)"
] wrote:

the Indian Council of Agricultural
Research (www.nic.in/icar)

ICAR has moved to: http://www.icar.org.in/