The
Indian Farmers Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) is backed by over 37,000 member
societies. The rural portal of IFFCO was launched in 2001 at a small scale.
Commonly referred to as the ICT initiative at IFFCO, the content has been
developed in eight Indian languages and caters to 16 states.
Typically, huge amount
of information is floating in the agriculture sector, which is either not
available. The agri-portal gives information on a large number of areas relevant
to the farmer. It also gives harvest prices for different states. District-wise
information furnished by the Ministry of Agriculture is available for principal
crops. In addition, the portal provides Mandi prices or wholesale prices of
crops. Currently, information is available on 82-120 crops depending on the
state.
It is just not enough
for provide adequate and correct information to farmers. Dissemination is a
critical component of the entire process. For appropriate dissemination, IFFCO
has set up over 100 kiosks in different parts of the country today. These kiosks
are equipped with touch screen PCs and dot matrix printers.
Brief audio summaries
are also available on touch screen computers. Education is a very important part
fo the initiative. Typically, IFFCO is looking at an each-one-teach-one as
medium of education and promotion. Company officials would always be ready help
at the kiosks to educate farmers on how to operate computers and understand the
portal. IFFCO is also trying to take assistance from local agricultural
graduates to act as facilitators.
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Touch screen PCs are in
the Rs 75,000-85,000 range. Therefore, IFFCO has replaced them with normal PCs
in areas where the educational-level is higher. This would cover rural
destination that are closer to large cities where farmers and villagers had
attained minimum basic education.
IFFCO is also using
their member cooperatives to help farmers learn email usage through phonetic
keyboards and multi-lingual email available in 12 different languages.
The kiosks access
information from the central server at Gurgaon. At the kiosks, information is
available offline and updation is just a single click away. The platform used is
Windows and IFFCO's in-house IT team comprising four people developed the
portal. Domain experts, though not dedicated members of the team, are available
at specific locations to cater to location-specific content requirement.
All expenditure
incurred is currently absorbed by IFFCO. However, plans are afoot to bring down
recurring expenses. For example, some of the bigger societies are being asked to
share recurring costs such as connectivity and power. IFFCO is also trying to
get members to make use to the portal for sales. Cooperatives are also being
asked to build a revenue model around the portal.
Bhaswati Chakravorty
bhaswatic@cybermedia.co.in