APPS THAT REVOLUTIONIZE INDIAN AGRICULTURE

INTRODUCTION  

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) plays an important role not only in turning agriculture into socially, economically and environmentally sustainable, but also contributing to the delivery of nutritious and economical food for all. Increasing internet penetration in states of India has led to the rise and development of mobile apps which are helping farmers with existing government schemes and other agriculture-based information to reach them in rural India. This digital change is revolutionizing Indian agricultural conditions to a great extent.

KISAN SUVIDHA

Kisan Suvidha helps farmers by providing relevant information on weather conditions for the next five days, dealers, market prices. Agro advisories, IPM practices, plant protection. Some unique features include extreme weather alerts, and market prices of commodities in the nearest area also, the maximum price in the state as well as in India. This app has empowered farmers in its best possible manner.

PUSA KRISHI

This app was launched in 2016 by the Union Agriculture Minister to help farmers to get information about technologies developed by the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI), which will help in increasing returns to farmers. The app also provides farmers with information related to new varieties of crops that were developed by the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), resource-conserving cultivation practices, farm machinery, and its implementation will help in increasing returns to farmers.

IFFCO KISAN AGRICULTURE

IFFCO Kisan is a subsidiary of Indian Farmers’ Fertilizer Cooperative Ltd and the application was launched in 2015. They help Indian farmers to make decisions through customized information related to their needs. The user can also access a variety of informative modules that includes agricultural advisory, weather, market prices, agriculture information library in the form of text, imagery, audio, and videos in the preferred language at the profiling stage. The app offers helpline numbers to get in touch with Kisan Call Centre Services.

CROP INSURANCE

This application is very useful for farmers in calculating insurance premium amounts for notified crops and provides information with cut-off dates and company contacts for their location and crops. It also works as a reminder and calculator for farmers about their insurance amount to be paid. This app can also be used to get details of the normal sum insured, extended sum insured, premium details, and subsidy information of any notified crop in any notified area. Information is linked to its web portal which caters to all stakeholders including farmers, states, insurance companies, and banks.

MKISAN APPLICATION

This application has been designed and developed by the in-house team of DAC with help of C-DAC Pune. It enables all the stakeholders to obtain advisories and information being sent by experts and government officials at different levels through MKISAN without registering in this portal

SHETKARI MASIK

This is a popular monthly magazine in the agriculture sector, published by the Department of Agriculture, Maharashtra since 1965. It has a very simple interface with mobile connectivity to register and magazines can be downloaded and used offline.

FARM-O-PEDIA

This was developed by Centre for Development of Advance Computing, Mumbai and the application is a bilingual android application targeted for rural Gujarat. The important functionalities include getting suitable crops as per soil and season, getting crop-wise information, check the weather in that area, managing cattle.

AGRIMARKET

This application can be used to get the market price of crops within a distance of 50km. Thus helping farmers in better price realization.

DIGITAL MANDI INDIA

As the name suggests this app helps in knowing different Mandi prices from different states and districts. This application helps farmers, traders, and all others to know the prices by browsing through various commodities, simplified reach to the selected mandi, data synced with Agmarknet.nic.in.

PASHU POSHAN

National Dairy Development Board has developed an android based software that optimizes the cost considering animal profile, like cattle age, milk production, fat in milk, feeding regime, etc., and also feed advisory to farmers were also given.

SIKKIM HORTICULTURE AND CASH CROP ASSISTANCE

This application can be used for submitting an online application for obtaining departmental assistance for farmers in Sikkim.

APPLICATION FOR POULTRY

The animal husbandry department of Himachal Pradesh has introduced a backyard poultry scheme which is centrally sponsored, where low input technology birds of colored, disease-resistant strains are supplied to farmers, with this app, farmers can avail the opportunity.

KHETI-BADI

It is a social initiative app that aims to support organic farming with information regarding the same to farmers in India. This helps farmers to switch from chemical farming into organic farming.

MNCFC

National Remote Sensing Centre, ISRO has developed his applications for field collection for crop assessment using satellite data under FASAL project of the Ministry of Agriculture. This app can be used to collect field photographs, GPS coordinates, and field information like crop type, condition, sowing date, soil type, etc., this information is used in creating a national geospatial database of crops.

CROP INFO

Crop Info was developed by Nirantara Livelihood Resources Private Limited, Bangalore, and Karnataka an app that provides production technology of commercially important Horticultural and Agricultural crops, production aspects, post-harvest management, processing possibilities, and market information. Crop Info is specifically developed for students, faculty of Agricultural and Horticultural Universities, Subject Matter Specialists, Extension officials, private sector professionals, and farmers.

CONCLUSION

These agriculture apps provide farmers up to date information about the latest technologies used in agriculture and helps to fill the information gap between the rural people and Government schemes in reaching them. These are Android apps for Indian farmers used in farming which provides them latest market rates, weather forecasting, information on Government policies and schemes for farmers, latest technology videos, news related to agriculture etc. Using these applications, one can directly ask questions to the agriculture experts and queries can be solved instantly by availing the audios and videos related to new technology, successful farming methods that can shape Indian agriculture.

AUTHOR

Raghavi M.D.,

PGDM (ABM),

National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management, Hyderabad