Information Communication Technology for Development in Agriculture - Essay Example

Research Proposal: Information Communication Technology in Agriculture Evaluation of Information Communication Technology for development in Agriculture Abstract Increased population depth has raised the demand of total production throughput. But as land is limited and most of the agricultural land is being used for either residential or industrial purposes, hence question of meeting the actual agricultural demand became severe. Controlling population is a way to tackle it but it’s a long term and never ending process and so, effective way to face the challenge is to adopt alternative methodology that is more efficient and guarantee to increase production per unit area. Theory states that total production is getting decreased day by day. In spite of using current existing technology production is coming out poor, which means there are some critical factors that are affecting it. In this paper various approaches will be taken to sort out the key points of this issue. Farmers will be interviewed directly or indirectly in order to get their viewpoints about whether they are receiving proper information and knowledge or not; or the information given to them is sufficient and understandable or not. After proper survey Information Communication Technology (ICT) will be used to rectify them. This paper mostly concentrates on different scopes of ICT in the field of agriculture. Aim The core problems that agricultural industry is facing today include: Urbanization which directly affects the agricultural land. Before urbanization proper knowledge of land management is necessary. Suppose one land that can accommodate 100 persons adequately but due to improper land management only 50 peoples are getting placed. It results into increase in urban area unnecessarily. This problem can be solved using information technology where, people’s habits, tastes and lifestyles are studied and according to that optimum residential area can be defined. Climatic changes like flood drought, weather changes also have impacts on foods1. Today’s technology that can be used for sophisticated statistical calculation in order to get idea of climatic change and based on that, steps are taken. The most important factor is lacking of proper knowledge among the public regarding the better using of resources. Here Information Communication Technology (ICT) plays one vital role. ICT is the best tool for sharing knowledge among farmers. Establishing rural network will enhance farmers’ idea exchanging capability. Apart from that using remote farm consulting system through camera and wireless, adequate information can be delivered. Research Questions Research proposal starts with research question or hypothesis. For this study research questions are: 1. What are the basic problems that agriculture industry is facing today? 2. Will Information Communication Technology (ICT) work better for these cases? 3. If yes to question 2 then till what extent it will serve our purpose? Objectives The main purpose of this research is to see how information communication technology will be used for better agricultural purposes. This research will address the problems related to farmers’ awareness and usage of ICT to overcome the issues. The direction of this work will have two three major phases as research questions. First one is going through existing literatures and tools to point out the core problems, the basic variables which are responsible for that degradation and also the extent they are affecting. Second phase will be checking whether ICT can make any improvement over the existing ones. Sampling and survey will be done in this stage. After researcher is confident enough with ICT approach finally, several methodologies will be proposed to implement the idea and then execution of these solutions will be done. Rationale The above figures are examples illustrating the utilization of land resource and available technology into the production and crop yield in Vietnam2. From figure 1 it is clear that land area after 1999 starts decreasing which is only due to the result of urbanization. Though rate of decrease is less but, it has a negative effect on production as revealed from figure 2, where there is a downfall from 1999 to 2000. The reason behind this is crop yield remains almost constant. Crop yield increases at a constant rate after 2000 and it results into higher total production. Increase in crop yield is made possible with advent of new technology but agriculture demands a higher production value and hence, yields. From the figures, it can be inferred, existing technology is not up to that level which can meet crop demand. And hence improvements are required. Our proposed ICT has a direct impact on this factor by using advanced tools and making proper awareness available to the farmers. Literature Review This section deals with the existing literatures related to ICT in agriculture. It outlines a summary of all the resource materials, authorial credentials, content credibility, source credibility, text credibility- Fluid integration of the source evaluation. A true literature review gives the proper sense of works that technology has achieved till date into that specified topic which helps one researcher to bring down his own research problem. Kwarteng et al. suggested that in order to facilitate information theory and allow the farmers to know about the technologies and facts about agriculture, ICT can be employed cost efficiently and effectively. It also lets extension agents and other stakeholders to familiar with them. They presented challenges and prospects of infusing ICTs for agricultural and rural development in Ghana. There, first data were collected from 291 extension agents and ICTs service provider like internet café, computer firms, training and business centre and the information centers among various districts in Ghana and then general trend of data were determined. Their effort revealed that extension agents have high and positive demands for ICTs for extension. They concluded with the opinion to establishment of regional communication centers to provide training workshop and ICT network and media support and monitor the ICT activities and impact on the regions. Weiss A. et al. (1999) clearly depicted the application of ICT in Agrometerological field. Internet, satellite communication and geographical information systems are prime examples of it that made easier to collect data and information on an almost infinite amount of topics in a timely fashion. They mainly concentrated their discussion on different methods of communicating agrometerological information which consists of disseminating and evaluating information, and to provide examples of these processes. It starts with scientific knowledge and ends with the proper evaluation of the information with intermediate steps are collection of data, changing data into useful information and dissemination of information. As human, financial and natural resources play differently across the world hence, there exists diversity in scientific knowledge and their understanding. Hence, it must be uniquely acceptable, accurate, timely, and cost effective. As per their report, internet will play one major role in accessing agrometerological information and multipurpose community telecentres will bear the key role for information sharing by disseminating through rural radio stations in local languages. Stricker S et al. (2003) explained in their paper the wide use of ICT in Germany. According to them, it started there at 1990 and got accelerated after introduction of internet in 1995. 85% to 95% of the surveyed farms were found to have computer and several software packages like crop management program, book-keeping software, cattle management and pig management are used by German people. With the implementation of all those people are getting right and better quality information than they used to get before. Shaik N. Mera et al. (2004) conducted study to examine the performance of three ICT projects of different origin and purposes in India. The main objective of ICT projects was to enhance the delivery of information to farmers and other rural dwellers. One project was managed as part of an exploration of e-governance; another was run by sugar co-operatives to expand services to growers and last one was an experiment by a large supplier to provide information to the farmers. They felt that, in order to incorporate ICT in all endeavors related to agriculture special effort must be put, government need to realise the potential of ICT fast distribution of information to the farmers and India government has to re-orient agricultural policies so that a well structured plan can be formed to exploit ICT’s potential for overall agriculture development. It has been also observed that ‘Gyandoot’, with an investment of only Rs. 2.5 million could make an impact on stakeholders by showing that future initiatives need not be investment-intensive. Other than technical infrastructure, efficient administration and good communication are also an integral part of ICT. They concluded after recommendation that, in drought prone areas, future ICT provide information such as weather forecasting, marketing information, access to land records, information on crop insurance, post-harvest technology and question-and-answer services. Gangurde M. (2005) gave information about impact of agriculture on Indian economy where it serves 80% of its population living in rural areas and also raw materials to agro industries. From the stage of struggle when main question was about to take care of only basic food requirements during independence, Indian agriculture has come a long way where it can visualize now its tremendous potential for exporting and commercial oriented agribusiness. The author told about selective mechanism by adoption of efficient equipment practices. Paper also tells about one methodology by which customer can access information on crop production and forecasts, market updates, the latest shipment positions and the prevailing foreign exchange rates. United Nations, Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (2003) put more stress on internet from economic and social perspectives. There example website for arts and crafts www.africancrafts.com is given which is designed to bring arts and artisans of African people online and suggested to have similar like online facility for organic farming. It will be very much useful in marketing the products of traditional agriculture farmers who may not be certified but use proper organic methods. The majority of farmers in the developing countries use conventional methods of farming that do not depend on additional chemicals either due to the lack of such chemicals or due to the lack of funds. With growing interest in organic farming in the developed countries, organic farmers can sell their products online to worldwide markets. An organic farming website may include a directory of all agriculture farmers using organic methods in the ESCWA member countries, for example. Such a website may also raise awareness of certification among traditional farmers that may be a more certain path to global markets. Moreover, tips on development of agriculture techniques and online educational material may be accessed by the farmers themselves, through handheld computers (explained in a following section), a local technology centre, or a simple village kiosk equipped with internet connection3. Suri P. (2005) explained the globalization step of Indian Agricultural marketing. He felt strongly the need for establishing sound agricultural marketing information system which will ensure utilization of the emerging trade opportunities by the farming community. For faithful planning and marketing purpose farmers need correct market information. Due to non-availability of current information on rice trend and status of stock in different markets worldwide is the major drawback for exporters and producer as well as traders. Author mentioned about reliable and comprehensive database which can ensure fair returns to the farmers after keeping market information. Access to such database will enable farmers to plan their strategies for sale at remunerative process. Other than them, consumers and traders would also be benefited by that. Keeping the importance of market information in mind, the gap between generation and dissemination of information should be minimized where Information and Communication Technology plays vital ole; using which appropriately might strengthen the interface between farming community and governing body. In India, in order to improve market information system, Directorate of Marketing and Inspection (DMI), Ministry of Agriculture has formulated a Central Sector Scheme (Agricultural Research and Marketing Information Network) for linking all regulated markets (~ 7000) spread all over the country, State Agriculture Marketing Boards/ Directorates and DMI headquarters by providing computing facilities and internet services through NICNET in a phased manner. The project AGMARKNET has been entrusted to National Informatics Centre, Department of Information Technology, Government of India for implementation on turnkey basis. Its main objectives are to establish a common network for keeping market information nationwide and to keep it up to date, provide the platform for collection and dissemination of information related to better price realization by the farmers, infrastructure related information comprising of facilities and services available to farmers with regard to storage and warehousing, cold storage, direct marketing, grading, re-handling and repacking, etc. In the paper, various constraints and difficulties are also mentioned. Among the various problems most important issues are: system integration, in order to make the project viable in market co-ordination among different vendors was necessary but to complexity number of vendors was required to reduce; secondly, number of simultaneous access of users is huge with the introduction of a common network and hence it requires very high bandwidth and also, as lot of the markets are located at below district level where communication is a big issue, thus fulfilling the requirement of high bandwidth is a question; Finally, computers were being introduced for the first time in most of the markets and as such the staff/officers were supposed to be unfamiliar with computer usage. In spite of these constraints, author treated ICT as effective method for agricultural development if the barriers are overcome. Singh N. (2006) presented one monograph to survey several initiatives to provide ICT services in rural India. It also examined the demand and supple side issues for successful implementation. From implementation point of view various issues have been discussed, and among them difference in scale, connectivity technologies, services offered, revenue models, organisational structures are important. As per the fieldworks, there are still remain various difficulties in implementation, but falling cost of hardware, new software, organisational learning strategy and high demand all give an optimistic view today. Harris R. (2004) suggested that poor and landless gate benefited through employment after increasing agricultural productivity. For rural people agriculture is the only way to support their living and ICT can deliver useful information to farmers in the form of crop care and animal husbandry, drought mitigation, irrigation and moreover it enables the farmer to participate in advocacy activities. One suitable example is suppose all the farmers are engaged into tomato production, as a result of which market gets excess of it and its value drops. In turn there remain some cases when tomato is rarely found in market and, obviously its value goes up. ICT can coordinate farmers planting through network of telecentres so that there is always a steady supply to the markets and also at fair price. Methodology Agricultural industry is not meeting the actual demand what it is actually expected to do. Reasons are land limitation, lacking of proper knowledge and advanced technology. With advanced fertilizers and sophisticated tool that are available, effort has been made to overcome the lagging but as shown in figure 2, there still remains some gap. Though increase in population has turned into land limitation but under utilization of land is also one of the reasons for decrease in agricultural area. To rectify that problem land management is essential. GIS system, which is a part of ICT works well for this case. Using GIS, information about one particular area can be covered and sent for further analysis. Computer has made food processing easier as it was before. If one food item is stored, computer can be used to monitor its condition and provide the necessary environment. Again, it can give useful information about its quality and after how much time it may degrade vastly. But, the most important aspect is lacking of proper knowledge. After using advanced technology too everything might turn to flaw if the user does not know much about its operation. Proper communication gap among the farmers as well as between them and outside world are mainly responsible for this lagging in production throughput. Hence, this research will primarily target the farmers, means they form the population here. Size of the population is near to infinite. So, next comes choosing samples of suitable size from whole population. Choosing sample is not an easy task. An inefficient sampling may lead to erroneous data collection and wrong result. In this case researcher will randomly select few villages where, communication is quite developed and, some cases where communication is very much under developed. From these two groups production outputs will be studied. If much deviations are not observed that means communication gap is not playing the major part and concentration will be put on technologies they are adopting. But, from our previous analysis it can be inferred that effect of knowledge sharing and communication is much. If certain deviation comes out then farmers from under developed place will be surveyed. Farmers can be chosen randomly or using ‘K’ factor analysis. They can be surveyed by mailing them to know what problems they are facing regarding cultivation. If they agree no such problem is there, that means they are not getting communicated well with the outside world and that’s why they are missing useful information related to market. Whatever they are doing, they think that it’s good enough. Suppose farmers go for seasonal production but according to seismic department, climate is not permitted for that particular crop which they used to cultivate. Without ICT they won’t be able to know the information properly and randomly going for that will definitely tend to lose. Other than mailing questionnaire also serve the purpose. But it is closed type statement where farmers are restricted to their answers. The best way to data collect is interview where direct face to face conversation is done. The researcher must be capable enough for personal interview; otherwise he may fail to cover his entire scope of data collection. Interview is a dynamic type of data collection as it gives the flexibility to the researcher or interviewer to change his question depending on the situation4. After data collection next solutions of these problems will be formulated. Proposal solutions include: Using biotechnology and information technology farmers will be given the awareness about latest technology regarding cultivation and market information regularly. Rural people will be connected through internet network in order to make communication between them possible and effective. Whenever they face any problem they can directly consult any expertise though this network. Portable camera and wireless communication device will be used for remote consulting. Regular workshops to enhance and exchange their knowledge will be done in the village premises. Setting up of intermediary organisation that work with rural people and get touch with them. Work Plan Task Duration Literature Review 5 Weeks Preparation of Survey 5 Weeks Carrying out Survey 4 Weeks Preparation of Interview 4 Weeks Interviewing Farmers 5 Weeks Analysis Data 3 Weeks Summation of Result 5 Weeks Submit Report ------- Conclusion Research proposal is the summary of the proposed work that checks the validation of proposed model. It starts with first research question which in this case was regarding the effectiveness of ICT to maximize yield value. After that, various problems with existing techniques are presented and explained from which it can be inferred that ICT has a bright aspect from these perspectives. Extensive literature survey has been done to get the idea of research that has been carried out on this field and then methodology has been defined. Finally, a short work plan is summarised following which strictly can lead to the completion of this research successfully. References Johnson, G. (1981) Climate Change and the World Grain Economy to the Year 2000: Some Implications for Domestic and International Agricultural Policy. Report on the 3rd Phase of a Climate Impact Assessment, National Defense University, Ft. Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C. Production Estimates and Crop Assessment Division [n.d] Foreign Agriculture Service. United Nations, Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (2003) Information Communication Technologies for Employment Creation and Poverty Alleviation. [n.p]. Kwarteng, J., Agunga, R., Zinnah, M. [n.d] Challenges and Prospects Using Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Extension for Agricultural and Rural Development for Ghana. Florida: 22nd Annual Conference Proceedings. Stricker, S., Emmel, M., Pape, J. (2003) Situation of Agriculktural Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Germany. Hungary: EFITA 2003 Conference. Meera, S., Jhamtani, A., Rao, D.U.M. (2004) Information and Communication Technology in Agricultural Development: A Comparative Analysis of Three Projects from India. Agricultural Research and Extension Network. Network Paper No. 35. Suri, P. (2005) NICNET based Agricultural Marketing Information Network (AGMARKNET) .A Farmers Centric Portal on Agricultural Marketing in India and a step towards Globalizing Indian Agriculture. Agricultural Marketing. Jan-March 2005. Vol. XLVII, No. 4. Weiss, A., Crowder, V., Bernardi, M. [n.d] Communicating Agrometerological Information. WAMIS Tools and Resources. Maoz, A.[n.d] Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Adoption as a Tool for Agricultural Research Coordination and Information Dissemination. Gangurde, M. (2005) Portal for Farmer. 3rd International Conference on E-Governance ICEG2005. Munack, A. And H. Speckmann. (2001) Communication Technology is the Backbone of Precision Agriculture. 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