mASK: A functioning personalized ICT-based agriculture advisory system: Implementation, impact and new potential
While Indian agriculture contributes merely 13.9% of the country's Gross Domestic Product, nearly 52% of the population still depends on agriculture for its livelihood. Close to half of the farmers are small farmers (owning 1.0 ha or less) facing near-stagnant productivity. This is due to several factors, but farmers often indicate that access to the right information at the right time is one of the most sought after need. Addressing this need to aid in the development of a productive and sustainable agricultural sector has certainly emerged as one of the major humanitarian challenges in India. There have been numerous efforts in this direction with the setting up of agricultural advisory systems, to provide information to farmers, but not many have succeeded in the objective of providing easily accessible, sustainable, personalized advisories to farmers. Recognizing this, the Indo-UK Advanced Technology Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, Systems and Services (IUATC), a major technology transfer initiative, supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) in India and UK Government under the Digital Economy Theme is attempting to address the challenges in Indian agriculture through Information and Communication Technology (ICT) networks. This paper presents a functioning Agricultural Advisory System that has been built with the aim of bridging information gaps between farmers and agriculture knowledge workers (such as agricultural scientists and extension workers) and is an extension of a technology effort that has been previously presented. While our earlier work only discussed the potential of using an innovative ICT approach to providing personalized agricultural advisories, this paper covers details of the technology implementation, presents a brief summary of the impact analysis carried out with the farmers registered into our system and discusses new features that could make the system more effective.
A new personalized agriculture advisory system reality, potential and technology challenges
The Indo-UK Advanced Technology Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, Systems and Services (IUATC) is trying to address the future challenges identified by the UK Government under the Digital Economy Theme and the Department of Science and Technology in India. One such area in rural India where Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) networks can have a major impact is Agriculture. This paper presents a new approach to building an Agricultural Advisory System aimed at bridging the information gaps that exist between farmers and extension workers and agricultural scientists in a country like India. It demonstrates the power of two-way mobile phones today, which when combined with innovative methods could provide services to farmers that could not even be envisaged till yesterday. The customized and personalized advisory becomes especially important in the Indian context, where 52% of the population depends on agriculture but generates merely 13.9% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With fragmented landholdings, the number of independent farmers has risen to 88 million with near-stagnant productivity. Growth-acceleration is possible only with customized advisory. India currently has a 900 million strong mobile phone subscriber base largely operating over voice oriented 2G GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) networks. With ever increasing rural mobile penetration, personalized agricultural advisory is a distinct possibility. The paper presents an innovative technology development effort, analyses the technological challenges faced as well as discusses the feedback obtained from early fieldimplementation and focuses on what needs to be done in future to scale such systems. © VDE VERLAG GMBH.