Ict in agriculture

Ict
ORW SEMINAR
On
Application of ICT in agriculture
BY
JAGRITI ROHIT
20133

• Agriculture is facing new and severe challenges in its own
right
• With rising food prices that have pushed over 40 million
people into poverty since 2010, more effective interventions
are essential in agriculture (World Bank 2011)
• The growing global population, expected to hit 9 billion by
2050, has heightened the demand for food and placed
pressure on already-fragile resources. Feeding that population
will require a 70 percent increase in food production (FAO
2009)
INTRODUCTION

• Given the challenges, the arrival of information
communication technology (ICT) is well timed.
• ICT is one of these solutions, and has recently
unleashed incredible potential to improve
agriculture in developing countries specifically.
• With the booming mobile, wireless, and Internet
industries, ICT has found a foothold even in poor
smallholder farms and in their activities

But what exactly are ICTs?
• Is any device, tool, or application that permits the exchange or
collection of data through interaction or transmission
• Umbrella term that includes anything ranging from radio to satellite
imagery to mobile phones or electronic money transfers

And can they really be useful and
cost-effective for poor farmers with restricted access
to capital,
electricity, and infrastructure?
Gained traction even in impoverished regions
Increases in their affordability, accessibility, and adaptability
New, small devices, infrastructure , and especially applications
(for example, that transfer money or track an item moving
through a global supply chain) have proliferated.

• In the past, television and radio were the main electronic
broadcast technologies used to reach rural communities;
however, in the past two decades, Internet- and mobile-based
channels have emerged.
• ICTs now include computer-based applications and such
communication tools as social media, digital information
repositories (online or offline), and digital photography and
video, as well as mobile phones (Balaji, Meera, and Dixit 2007).

Current status of ICT in
India
Indian Telecom market is one of the fastest growing markets in
the world.
With its 926.55 million Telephone connection, it is the second
largest network in the world after China.
It is also the second largest wireless network in the world.
The country is poised to achieve 1 billion telephone connections.
Wireless telephones are increasing at a faster rate. The share of
wireless telephones is 96.47% of the total phones.
ANNUAL REPORT 2011-12
GOI, DEPT OF TELECOMMUANICATION

The share of private sector in total telephones is 86.09%.
Overall tele-density has reached 76.86%. Urban tele-density is
167.46%, whereas rural tele-density is at 37.52% which is also
steadily increasing.
Broadband connections increased to 13.30 million.
The penetration of internet and broadband has also improved
with 20.99 million internet subscribers and 13.30 million broadband
subscribers across the country
GOI, DEPT OF TELECOMMUNICATION

%share of telephone
2011
wireless
wireline
3.5%
96.47%
% share of telephone
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Growing %age share of private
network

• Number of telephone
connection per hundred
habitant
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
mobile
landline
• Number of internet
connection per hundred
inhabitant
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
broadband
internet

• During the year 2010-2011, the number of TV household in
India have grown from 136 million to 143 million.
• Penetration of TV services increased from 52% to 68% in the
Indian household.
year % households possessing
radio
% households possessing
television
rural urban Rural urban
2004-05 26.3 33.6 25.6 66.1

• The rural telephone connections increased from 47.10
million in March 2007 to 282.29 million in March, 2011 and
further to 315.39 million in December'11.
• The share of rural phones in the total telephones has
constantly increased, from 22.88% in 2007 to 34.04% in
December'11

Tele density
number of telephones per 100 population
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
urban
total
rural
The values are
expressed in
percentage.

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
subcriber
Column1
Series 3
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
subscriber
1.3
2.3
3.8
6.2
8.8
13.3
Broadband subscriber in million
0.2

Main phases in the agriculture sector
Crop cultivation
and harvesting
Input management
Water management
Fertilization
Pest management
Post harvest
Transportation
Food processing
Marketing
Sowing
Pre-cultivation
Crop selection
Calendar definition
Access to credit
Land preparation
Packaging
Land selection

Information produced/needed
Crop cultivation
and harvesting
Input management
Water management
Fertilization
Pest management
Post harvest
Transportation
Food processing
Marketing
Sowing
Pre-cultivation
Crop selection
Calendar definition
Access to credit
Land preparation
Packaging
Land selection
Information for
the selection of the best crop
according to their land,
access to input and credit,
market (Cost-Benefit), etc.
Information for the sound
management of the whole cropping
activities, including the resilience to
natural (e.g. weather) and
anthropogenic shocks
Information related to
post-harvest techniques
and tools, marketing and
transportation infrastructures,
etc.

Pre-cultivation
Crop selection
Calendar definition
Access to credit
Land selection
Application of ICT
DSS, GIS, Remote sensing,
e/m-consulting, KMS, sampling devices
connected to networking tools
KMS, e/m-consulting, e/m-learning, DSS,
GIS
Networking tools (mobile phones, radios,
wireless networks), Management
Information System (MIS), e-commerce and
mobile commerce
Decision Support System (DSS), modeling
software, e/m-learning, e/m-consulting,
Knowledge Management Systems (KMS)

Application of ICT
Crop cultivation
and harvesting
Input management
Water management
Fertilization
Pest management
Sowing
Land preparation
KMS, e/m-learning, e/m-consulting, GPS, GIS,
computer controlled devices, machine2machine
communication and sensor networks
GPS, GIS, e/m-learning, e/m-consulting, computer
controlled devices, m2m communication, sensor
networks
DSS, MIS, GPS/GIS, e/m-learning
DSS, GIS, MIS, sensor networks, m2m communication
DSS, GIS, MIS, sensor networks, m2m communication
DSS, GIS, management information system, sensor
networks, m2m communication

Application of ICT
Post harvest
Transportation
Food processing
Marketing
Packaging
Networking tools (mobile phones, lo-fi technologies)
for broadcast
GPS, GIS, MIS, tracing devices, m2m communication
Tracing devices, KMS, e/m-learning, e/m-consulting,
GPS, GIS
Farm to fork tracing tools – GPS, RFID, GIS,
DBMS, MIS, KMS, e/m-learning, e/m-consulting,
machine2machine communication

One size does not fit all
Individual needs of the farmer need to
be met
Information gaps: What to grow?
Farming practices to be adopted during
the growth phase
Pest, Disease And Nutrient Deficiency
Mgt
Harvesting techniques
Best place to sell produce
Information overload Inputs selection
Market information

Short supply
of extension
agents
Less number of
female extension
agents
More number of
farmer per extension
worker
Lower level of
education of
Bottom level
extension agents
More area to
be covered by
agents
Poor ratio of
SMS to agents
Human
Resource

Need to Provide instant expert agro advisory services
Farmers need again farm specific agro advisory

fibre
flower
s
wood
grains
vegeta
bles
comm
ercial
fruits
pulses
oilseed
Aroma
tic
plants
spices
Medici
nal
plants
fodder

Extension
worker
Expert system
Newspapermagazinesfriends
Television Neighbour

“A computer program designed to model the problem solving
ability of a human expert” (Durkin, 1994).
“A system that uses human knowledge captured in a computer to
solve problems that ordinarily require human expertise”.
Three components viz., knowledge base, inference engine and
user interface.
Major application areas of expert system agriculture, education,
environment and medicine.
Journal of Computer Science and Applications.

Characteristics of Agricultural Expert
System
 Simulates human reasoning about a problem domain, rather
than simulating the domain itself.
 Performs reasoning over representations of human knowledge.
 Solves problems by heuristic or approximate methods.
Georgian Electronic Scientific Journal:

The experience and knowledge of a human expert is captured in
the form of IF-THEN rules
Facts which are used to solve problems by answering questions
typed at a keyboard attached to a computer

 In India, Sarma et al. (2010) developed an expert system in
order to diagnose and manage the diseases occurring in rice
crop.
 Integrates a structured knowledge base that contains
knowledge about symptoms and remedies of diseases in the rice
plant appearing during their life span.
Rice expert system

Expert system
shell
Knowledge base
Coordinating
module for
knowledge
Data base
Expert system
programme
for knowledge
formatting
Interactive
knowledge
module for
Knowledge
acquisition
USER
INTERFACE
DOMAIN
SPECIFIC
EXPERTISE AND
CONTENTS
IS
expert
International Journal of Artificial Intelligen
Volume(1): Issue(1)

 A web based tomato crop expert information system was
developed by Babu et al. (2010) in India.
 contains two main parts viz., tomato information system and
tomato crop expert system
ISSN 2231-1270 Volume 3, Number 1 (2011),
pp. 59-71

 Vinod et al. (2008) developed an image based rapeseed-
mustard disease expert system in India.
 The diagnosis and control measures of economically
important diseases like Alternaria blight, white rust and white
rot , downy mildew complex, powdery mildew, white rot of
rapeseed-mustard were effectively performed by using this
expert system.
pp. 59-71

Prasad et al. (2006) formulated an expert system viz.,
AMRAPALIKA for diagnosing 14 different pests including eight
diseases and six insects in Indian mango variety.
Important diseases like Powdery mildew, Black spot,
Anthracnose, Red rust, Die back, Bacterial spot, Sooty mould
and Malformation and insects like Shoot-borer, Red ants,
White ants, Mealy bug, Mites and Fruit fly.
pp. 59-71

 Launched by Secretary, DARE and DG, ICAR Agri Daksh and
Expert System on Seed Spices on February 24,2011
 It enables domain experts to build online expert system in
their crops with minimal intervention of knowledge engineers
and programmers
 This in turn will reduce losses due to diseases and pests
infestation, improve productivity with proper variety selection
and increase in income of the farmer.
 Maize Agri Daksh is the first system developed by IASRI in
collaboration with Directorate of Maize Research, New Delhi.

Advantages of Expert System
• Extension personnel, researchers and farmers to identify crop
diseases and enable to proceed their management.
• User can easily identify the disease on the basis of
photographs of symptoms and text descriptions of disease.
• The user friendly software developed using windowing
environment, thus provides enough facilities to identify the
disease and to suggest the remedy conveniently

Reduce employee training costs.
Centralize the decision making process.
 Create efficiencies and reduce the time needed
to solve problems.
 Combine multiple human expert intelligences.
 Reduce the amount of human errors.
 Review transactions that human experts may
overlook.
Provide consistent answers for repetitive decisions, processes and tasks.
 Hold and maintain significant levels of information.

• Many farmers in the country are illiterate and knowledge of
computers in rural areas is still unreached.
• It needs to be expanded and updated to accommodate new
diseases and ailments of important crops in the locality.
• There is a need to include other disease diagnosis techniques
such as, laboratory tests, soil test report, tissue test, plant
analysis report, etc.
• The integration of nutrient deficiency module with the
knowledge base needs to be included
pp. 59-71

The picture quality is required to be enriched.
The complexities arising in managing rules for large
knowledge base.
Since the computer is lack of common sense, the
programmer should develop the expert system in efficient way.
If he or she does mistake, everything will be collapsed.
pp. 59-71

Bridging the gap in the agri supply chain and offering a
communication platform to link farmers to the markets
Both computer-based as well as mobile-based models
E choupal Warana, Grameeen Sanchar Society , REUTERS
MARKET LIGHT , AGMARKNET and LIFELINES
Amongst the promoters are public sector, not-for-profit sector
and private sector companies who are targeting the major
stakeholder i.e. the farmer, with their unique information delivery
systems.
ICT in Agricultural Supply Chains

Mobile companies are also targeting
rural areas with their specific products
and services.
nokia life tool project Airtel and
Reuters Market Light project

Applications for whole chain
• Specialized, low-cost solutions;
may not be useable elsewhere
• Special focus on smallholders
• Sustainability unclear
Applications for own suppliers only
• Commercial applications,
generalizable usage
• No special focus on smallholders
• Sustainable model
Private
sector
driven
Public
sector
driven
ICT
applications
and services
for
smallholder
inclusion in
supply chain
Ict in agriculture :e source2011

Reuters Market Light (RML)
October 2007
 Agricultural market price information, weather as well
as crop advisory information via the mobile phone.
 Localized information .
 Tracks prices for 250 commodities across 1,000 mandis (with
195 in Maharashtra)
 The mode of delivery is via SMS but they expect to include
other modes such as voice and/or WAP in the future

ICT-Enabled Kiosks in Rural India Can Help
to Inform Rice Farmers ICT applications can improve linkages
between procurers and smallholders in
indirect ways as well.
These centers (sometimes simple
kiosks;) offer ICT-based access to
information and extension services to
attract farmers to the centers.
 Farmers are consumers of household
items and agricultural inputs sold in
these places, but they are also suppliers
of agricultural produce.
 farmers have the option of visiting multiple centers nearby, or a
company that procures the major crop grown in a place might
have the sole collection center in the area

 companies build farmers’ trust and loyalty.
Come harvest time, farmers familiar with the center are likely
to sell their produce at the distribution center, which reduces
the company’s cost of procuring raw material.
 In exchange, farmers have access to information that improves
the productivity and quality of their crops.

 The example cited most often is that of ITC’s e-Choupal service,
an extensive network of kiosks—6,500, in 40,000 villages reaching
approximately 4 million farmers—where farmers access an
extensive array of information (prices, weather, expert advice) for
free.
 ITC’s revenues come from its commodity transactions and input
sales at the kiosks. ITC plans to deepen its relationship with farmers
by offering information services via mobile phone (Kumar n.d.).

Indian Farmer’s Fertilizer Co-Operative Limited (IFFCO)
Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL),
DSCL—Haryali Kisan Bazar,
Tata Kisan Sanchar
Gojred Adhar,
Bharti FieldFresh
and Reliance Fresh.

INNOVATIVE PRACTICE SUMMARY
EID Parry’s Indiagriline Services Improve
Sugarcane Production and Sourcing
Indiagriline is a web-based portal
Supply-chain information comes to
farmers through EID Parry’s Cane
Management Software..

Primary Rural Wholesale Markets Capitalize on New
Roads, Increased Vegetable Production, and Mobile
Phone Coverage in Assam
Produce for Sale at an Assamese
“Superhaat.”
These markets were booming
The trucker/traders described the
benefits of these larger markets:
They offered sufficient product for sale
to provide choice, they offered a variety of
products, and the turnaround times were
quick, but the critical change was the
extension of the mobile phone network.
.

Mass Media Support to Agriculture Extension”.
The scheme utilizes infrastructure of Doordarshan and All India
Radio to broadcast 30 minutes programme on Agriculture five/six
days a week from the following Stations/Kendras:
(a) 96 FM Stations of All India Radio
(b) 180 High/Low power transmitters of Doordarshan
(c) 18 Regional Kendras of Doordarshan
(d) Programme on DD National

Kisan Vani from 15th February,
2004 in collaboration with Ministry
of Agriculture to inform local
farmers the daily market rates,
weather reports and day-to-day
activities in their area at a micro
level.
Presently ‘Kisan Vani’ is being
broadcast and relayed from AIR 96
FM Stations.
Kisanvani : a initiative towards
Rural Development
Women empowerment through
Kisanvani

In the year 2006-07 Audience Research Unit of DG,AIR has
conducted Radio Audience.
Farmers in most of the states listened to the programmes
related to integrated pest management, cultivation of export
oriented cash crops and about modern agricultural implements.
Subjects the farmers wanted to include in the programme
were about irrigation methods, loans and subsidy scheme of the
government, and farm seeds and seed production etc.

Kissan Krishideepam
 A weekly Agriculture Television
program - in Malayalam
language that provides select
information on best practices,
success stories, departmental
news, news on various farming
related public programs, market
analysis, cultivation methods,
and analysis of current issues,
etc.

 IIITMK by agricultural and media experts.
 Weekly television program (30 minutes duration) over a
leading satellite channel (Asianet) in Kerala.
 More than five million regular viewers across the State and
beyond.
 Completed the production and telecast of 370 unbroken
weekly episodes during the last 8 years
.

IMPACT OF TELEVISION ON CAPACITY BUILDING
OF FARMERS
• The study was conducted during 2005 to examine the level of farm
televiewing behaviour of the farmers and it’s impact on various capacities
of farmers in Anand District of Gujarat.
• The respondent farmers with favourable farm televiewing behaviour were
observed significantly better than the respondents with unfavourable farm
televiewing behaviour in characteristics like role taking empathy, non
fatalism ,cosmopoliteness economic, motivation, risk orientation, scientific
orientation market orientation, credit orientation, innovation proneness,
attitude towards modern agricultural practices, knowledge regarding
improved animal husbandry practices and overall modernization.
Agric. Sci. Digest, 28 (4) : 301 - 303, 2008

Revenue-cost stream
Infrastructural constraints
Need based quality informational inputs
Mode of delivery
Commitment of stakeholders
Awareness and communication

 Information technologies can be the best way for farmers to update
themselves on information related to agri inputs, credit, markets, weather,
extension advisory and other e-governance services, etc. Both mobile as
well as Internet based models can gain popularity among farmer folk as
each of these offer advantages.
 Internet can provide a range of services through an interactive, web-
based interface and multimedia to a large number of beneficiaries at a
minimal cost; however Internet connectivity, electricity availability and
capacity building are some of the challenges before it.
Mobiles, on the other hand are capable of providing customized services
and ensure speedy and timely delivery of information

Hence the challenge is how both types of communication technologies
can be used based on region, crop, type of infrastructure availability, and
cost of infrastructure development.
 For empowering the farmers through ICTs, there is a need to first have
infrastructural and operational modules, user friendly mode of delivery
and right product-service mix.
 However, the most important strategic issue before these models is
how these can be made sustainable on their own?
Whether to charge farmers or have alternate source of income
generation for sustainability remains the important question?
Whether farmers are willing to pay and for what services also needs to
be answered through further research studies in this area.

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