Review of literature study on information and communication technology initiatives in Indian agriculture

Abstract

Information and Communication technologies (ICTs) play a vital role in communicating scientific and sustainable farming practices to the farming community in time. In order to analyze and synthesize the research findings on the impact of ICT on the framers, it was determined to collect and review the literature on the existing published results from various sources. The literature review has been designed with the following objectives; to understand the existing ICT efforts in the Indian agriculture scenario; to analyze agriculture advisor information such as cultivation practices /marketing/Government programmes / inputs availability/ others etc; to identify ICT based training for farmers; to review the challenges in implementing ICT initiatives; to analyze issues related to sustainability of ICT efforts in agriculture. Each objective was thoroughly discussed from the result of the paper published. The literature review process was targeted particularly on the impact of ICTs in Indian agriculture. The researcher have collected around 334 papers of which about 150 papers were selected and reviewed in depth suitable research was from internet source as well as electronic journals and websites. At the end, the collected literatures were arranged, explained and summarized according to objective designed. From the literature study it was found that there were 64 ICTs initiatives being implemented in India. Following are the ICT tools/media with number of projects; mobile phone/telephone based (16); SMS based (10);Interactive Voice Response system (IVRS) based (11); radio dial-up and broadcasts (1); Air Radio based (1); communit FM radio based (3); video-conferencing (4); web based (51); multimedia based (19); televison based (20; online video channel based (1); print media based (30; phone base information portal (1) and PDA based (1). The researcher summarized the best one or in some case two ICT projects from each category which has mentioned above. The best ICT projects have been selected on the basis of current studies, award winning and latest innovation Interestingly, it was observed most of the ICT projects being implemented in Tamil Nadu (17) followed by Andhra Pradesh (14), Karnataka (14), Maharashtra (12), Uttar Pradesh (12), Madhya Pradesh (11), Panjab (11), Haryana (10). These projects have come up with the effort of private companies, government, cooperatives, academic institutions and NGOs. With regard to agriculture information, these projects are giving following information: weather data, market price, agri-inputs, pest and disease management, soil testing, cultivation practices, fertilizer scheduling and recommendations, agri-credits, e-agri-trading, crop insurance, cold storage availability, agriculture contents, irrigation techniques, bio-fertilizers, vermi-compost, agri-news, animal husbandary, crops tips, farm machinery, pre-and post-harvest etc. The generic information is also giving such as microfinance, health, life insurance, education, Govt. schemes, e-Governance etc. Apart from agriculture advisory, farmers are also being trained by using suitable ICT tools/media such as multimedia; web based systems and radio dial-up and broadcast. There are various socio-technical challenged has been incurred during implementation of the ICT project. The common challenges were frequent power cut, low bandwidth, poor dial-up connection, poor telephone connectivity, illiteracy and hesitation of farmers, lack of familiarity with computer/OS. In addition to web, multimedia, radio, TV etc. mobile phone is having the number of facilities and options and that would be great scope of innovations. Therefore several ICT projects are now incorporating mobile phone as one of the ICT tools/media. Intervention of GPS, GPRS, IVRS, GIS, Remote Sensing and wireless network technology have created lot of scope to innovate with unique solution for problems existing in Indian agriculture.