Adding value to Farming

Cell phones: anytime, anywhere tool for empowerment
The 4 inch mobile device which brings the world together in a nanosecond, sooner than you can blink has become the most indispensable tool in today’s modern world. It even in its small yet big avatar threatened to bring down the UPA government unearthing the mother of all scams. It’s used to connect, check the news, weather , send messages , you name it the mobile is capable of doing it all except for reproduction. From the huge bulky cumbersome device which was horrendously expensive and always a status symbol to flaunt has now become cheap, easily available and affordable. From the bai to the maali to the rickshaw wallah to the nukkad wala karayana shopwale uncle...Everyone has them. It is in fact one thing which has the highest salability and the prices have gone down something inverse to inflation in our country! Also there has been a dramatic shift in our lives from the real world to the virtual one where everything be it news, games, bank statements, stock prices, maps , information all is a finger tip away.
This tiny device which fits anywhere offers just a tiny bit more than two-way communication! It is used by teenagers to text; lose themselves in a world away from adults to a world of networking, music and online games, by housewives to network or as they say these days! It is increasingly being recognized by market companies as a tool for providing value –added services to the consumers. The VAS providers have exhausted themselves with the rest of the different segments of the society and have directed their attention to the farmer who generally has less access to accurate, timely, relevant information about farm operations from sowing to harvest to prevailing market rates of crops and commodities to recommendations from experts in the field of agriculture and allied services.
With the expansion of cellular services in rural India, reaching out to farmers has become easier. Though gathering data about their information needs maybe a pain staking task; as the data base needs to be established to set up the network. First of all clearing the apprehensions in the mind of farmers is the biggest hurdle to explain the pros and cons, it is the biggest challenge to get the farmer to innovate, to adopt the change because they always suspect that the service provider is out to make a fool of them or make quick money or doubt the reliability. The behavioral change is the most important when trust is established the farmer is ready to embrace the change which will help him eventually. There has been an emergence of one such VAS provider in Punjab called INFOPLUS MEDIA which has been started with a lot of zeal and promise by two such enterprising people by the names of Ikhlaq Singh Aujla and Jugraj Sohi. There firm has stepped in to provide agricultural information to farmers free of cost. The medium of dissemination of information is the mobile phone via the text message (SMSes). The content of the service include crop information, market information (prevailing rates in local areas to bench mark market, MSP, future price trends, exim policy), weather information, crop advisory and other handy trips sourced directly from PAU, ICAR, and the CPRI. They have also given impetus and have promoted allied services like floriculture, animal husbandry, apiculture, and agro forestry.. They also aim to be a one-stop information bureau in regards to loans, subsidies, insurance etc..
Jugraj Sohi, remarks, that they stepped in to provide this service in a state which subsists itself on agriculture and is the major contributor to the food bowl of the country. She, herself a postgraduate agriculture
from PAU felt the need to provide information which if received timely by the farmers would result in saving of costs and help them in making timely and critical decisions.
Her partner Ikhhlaq Singh Aujla, a cultivator himself says, that they stepped into empower the farmer as there was a gap between the information and it reaching the ultimate user. They wanted to bridge the gap and to fill in the grey area via the mobile which helps in transmitting information anytime, anywhere.
There unique firm has covered 26 districts impacting 6000 farmers and counting. All the service provided is free of cost and one can subscribe by a simple SMS of their name, village, block and district to 9815766442 or 9888036099.
Jang Bahadur Singh Sangha , Secertary General of POSCON , the largest seed potato organization of Asia says that agricultural VAS presently available in the country area huge asset to the farmers for services such as weather forecast, commodity prices in various markets and even future trading prices. But sometime the accuracy for instance weather is questionable and therefore can have negative bearings.
Thus the potential of mobile phones as a medium of information dissemination and revenue generation is huge provided the gaps in communication are addressed rightly, and accuracy and timely delivery of information is ensured.

ravneet sangha