Answer:

Agriculture is an information intensive sector where farmers should be well versed in the latest farming technologies and business techniques. ICT plays an important role in addressing the challenges faced in management of natural resources & production of commodities.

The potential role of ICT in agriculture

♤ Information dissemination throughout crop-cycle - through technologies (like Satellite Communication, Geographic Information System (GIS), computer network, video and mobile phones) regarding weather conditions, input requirements like soil health, fertilizers etc. Example – DD kisan.

♤ Increasing productivity – by precision farming, popular in developed countries, which extensively uses IT to make direct contribution to agricultural productivity.

♤ Agriculture marketing - Awareness of up-to date information on prices for commodities, inputs and consumer trends help improve farmer’s livelihood. For example National agriculture market is possible only due to ICT

♤ Collectivization of producers – to facilitate appropriate alliances and overcoming the barrier of small landholdings and achieving economies of scale. Example – farmer producer organizations.

♤ New employment opportunities - in rural sector- eg:- information kiosks .This will reduce the disguised unemployment.

♤ Effective monitoring and analysis – of agricultural performance through ICT to reduce losses at various levels of supply chain

♤ Countering adverse effect of globalization – by reducing the information asymmetry among farmers of different countries

♤ Increasing effectiveness of government service delivery – in quick estimation and timely compensation to farmers in wake of disaster. It ensures sowing area is not reduced in the next season.

♤ Insurance: PMKSY aims to assess the damage to crops for insurance purposes through satellite and Drone imagery. This will improve accuracy and compensation.

Started during 11th FYP, NeGP-A aims to achieve rapid development of agriculture in India through ICT enabled multiple delivery channels such as Internet, Government Offices, Touch Screen Kiosks, Krishi Vigyan Kendras , Kisan Call Centres, Agri-Clinics, Common Service Centers, Mobile Phones (Broadcast, IVRS, interactive messaging using unstructured Supplementary Service Data and Voice Recognition for ensuring timely access to agriculture related information for the farmers of the country.

Considering the potential of ICT in this sector government has taken many initiatives under NeGP-A. Some of which are as follows:-

♤ Agricultural services like Pesticide registration, Display on the Web of Seed Testing Results, Prices and arrival details, District level Agro-met advisories, Information on fertilizers/seeds/pesticides etc.

♤ Mobile applications for increasing awareness by providing information – Example: Kisan Suvidha, Pusha Krishi, India weather etc.

♤ Development of web portals - Farmers’ Portal where a farmer can get information on a range of topics, mKisan Portal where officials and scientists can send targeted advisories to farmers, Crop Insurance Portal for complete information related to Crop Insurance scheme

♤ e-Mandi: has been launched to make procurement of agricultural products smoother and provide competitive remuneration, especially for small and marginal farmers.

♤ Modernisation of land records - Many States have computerized their land records and are providing computerized copies of Records of Rights on demand. These states have also placed their land records data in public domain

Thus, ICT can play a major role in facilitating the process of transformation of rural India provided the existing bottlenecks are addressed soon.