ICAR and Digital India Corporation sign MoU to provide ‘Demand Based Tele Agriculture Advisories’ to Farmers

Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has signed a MoU with the Digital India Corporation (DIC) on Wednesday (9 June 2021) to provide location specific farm tele-advisories.

The event was presided over by Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra, Director General (ICAR) & Secretary, Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE); Sanjay Kumar Singh, Additional Secretary (DARE) & Secretary (ICAR) & Abhishek Singh, Managing Director & CEO, DIC.

An official statement said, "The objective of the MoU is to integrate the existing Interactive Information Dissemination System (IIDS) platform of DIC with the proposed Kisan Sarathi programme of ICAR & its implementation through ICAR network to reach a large number of farmers across India".

It added that the memorandum of understanding intends to facilitate growers by providing location specific ‘Demand Based Tele Agriculture Advisories’.

It must be noted that the ICAR is under the agriculture ministry and the DIC comes under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The statement further said DIC and ICAR have agreed to work together to develop & deploy ICT platforms to establish & operate a multi-media, multi-way advisory & communication system for supporting different agricultural activities at local level.

To start with, IIDS would be deployed at Indian Council of Agricultural Research that is a push-and pull-based system where agriculture-related information can be pulled from the growers using mobile phones.

Information Dissemination System gives an option to farmers to get individual needs-based information for only those services to which they have subscribed.

The experts at the back end would have access to growers’ database while responding to their queries. In this way, they will be able to understand the problems raised by cultivators or other field problems in a better way and quickly provide appropriate solutions to the grower in a personalized manner.

At present, the IIDS platform has been deployed in NE states, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh that would be extended to all other states with this MoU with ICAR.

DIC will provide the complete technical solution with support for development, hosting & managing the requisite ICT platform.

Meanwhile, ICAR would manage and monitor the entire operations via their extension services network in the form of Krishi Vigyan Kendras, various domain specific research institutes & network of Agri Universities etc, in a proper manner.