How ICT innovations can help farmers

Empowering growers with the right information at the right time can improve yield

April 21, 2015:  

Public and private actors are looking for effective solutions to address challenges in agriculture, including how to address the abundant information needs of farmers and make agriculture profitable for them.  

Farmers need updated information to empower themselves in taking research to land, avail timely and adequate credit, seek and act on market intelligence reports and access market and negotiate prices. This critical information may increase farmer’s productivity, income as well as protect their food security and livelihoods. 

Using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in innovative ways through ICT-enabled services helps in disseminating timely information on agricultural advisories, financial services and agricultural marketing and risk transfer to the farmer to improve their capacity and mitigate risks.

Agricultural advisory  

 Farmers’ information priorities include accurate local weather forecasts, crop specific advisory sequenced according to the stage in the crop cycle and price information. ICTs helps in capturing real time weather parameters through remote sensors, collect commodity prices through mobile technologies and acquire updated research findings regarding crops through the web-based platforms of agricultural universities and research institutes.

The information, thus, collected is stored in database and triggered automatically to disseminate localised and personalised information on weather, commodity prices and crop cultivation to registered farmers through Short Messaging Service (SMS) and Interactive Voice response (IVR) over the mobile communication channel. This updated information empowers farmer as they are better informed and prepared themselves to utilise their resources profitably.

Read complete article here: How ICT innovations can help farmers 

Taken from http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/