M-Extension-An advanced communication strategy for technology dissemination in agriculture Dr J.Meenambigai Associate Professor Department of Agricultural Extension Faculty of Agriculture Annamalai University Chidambaram Tamilnadu

1. DST PURSE II Sponsored
NationalSeminaron
ExtensionStrategiesandTechnologies
forSustainableAgricultural
Development
Annamalai University
Facultyof Agriculture
DepartmentofAgriculturalExtension
NSATFSAD - 2018

2. M-Extension–AnAdvanced
CommunicationStrategyforTechnology
DisseminationinAgriculture
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Invited Lecture on
Speaker
Dr.J.Meenambigai
Assistant Professor (Agrl.Extension)
Faculty of Agriculture
Annamalai University
Email: extensionmeena@gmaill.com

3. M-Extension – Mobile Phones for Agricultural
Advisory Services
Mobile telephony – Subscription rate – developing countries
22/100 in habitants in 2005 – 91.8 per 100 inhabitants in 2015.
Recent 3G and 4G technology play a crucial role in the
development of rural people.
Mobile phones – devices used to create, store access and share
information anytime, anywhere.
Teamed with extension and advisory services help to improve the
livelihoods of rural people.
Getting much needed timely information to their fingertips at
potentially low cost.
M-Extension – mobile based extension advisory services.
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4. Cont…..
Enable value added services such as mobile agro services and
machine to machine services.
Help farmers to monitor their crops and farm machinery
through mobile phones.
Value added services – fairly accessible to all the farmers.
Machine to machine services – cost intensive and require in
infrastructure.
Eg: push and pull SMS, IVRS, mobile apps so on.
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5. Principles of M-Extension
Content – user centric , attractive and sustainable
Delivery mechanism – text, IVR, call, pictures, videos etc.
Reach and interaction – awareness programmes, should be
conducted to ensure client needs and interactive.
Communication not just advisory – encourage interaction
and facilitate capacity development.
Sustainability – financial and infrastructural through profit
based model of information delivery.
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6. Cont…..
Integration of technology – web portals, videos,
voice, pictures and animations.
Reassessment vs development – better to build
existing services rather than new ones likely to be
more sustainable.
Associated services – enable economic development
of the rural community, infrastructure.
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7. Role of mobile phones
Access to modern technology for farming.
Fulfill the informational needs of farmers.
 Improve the information transfer between farmers and
research institutions.
Significantly reduce the communication and
information cost
Provide new opportunities for rural farmers to obtain
knowledge and information. 7
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8. Cont…..
Provided information on markets, weather, transport and
agricultural techniques.
Provide new approach to farmers to make tentative
decisions.
Leads to greater social cohesion and improved social
relationships.
 Provided connectivity and offer benefits such as mobility
and security to owners. 8
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9. Mobile communication–Apps and Services
Dynamic and widespread (smart phones & tablets)
ACC to International Tele communication union
• 2015-7.08 billion mobile connections
• 2017 – smart phone market grew up to 13 %
Increasing penetration due to the fact that it has
become prominent means of communication,
entertainment, information, daily life and business.
Useful and necessary tools like wide touch screens, high
resolution cameras, GPS etc…..
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10. Mobile apps
Software programmes designed to run on Smartphone,
tablets and other devices
Basic tasks like e-mail, web browsing, calendar contacts,
weather forecast etc.,
Growing demand for new products and services puts
pressure to develop mobile apps for commerce, banking,
health and tourism.
Mobile agricultural apps – characterise to target the needs of
the agricultural sector and its stake holders.
Wide spectrum of activities from field to market
Services such as weather forecasting, agricultural business
news, information for agricultural machinery and equipment
daily farming yield forecasting and monitoring.
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11. According to World bank – benefits of these apps in the
development could be achieved through the following ways
Provision of better access to information
Provision of better access to agricultural extension services
Provision of better connections with the market and distribution
networks.
Provision of better access to funding opportunities.
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12. Case Study Report
Greek case study has shown the majority of the participants (95
%) have never used a mobile app for their agricultural
activities.
This may be due to the following reasons.
Lack of development of dedicated apps.
Lack of apps with local language
Poor quality of apps
Lack of awareness of the app possibilities in the target
groups.
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13. It was suggested to overcome these challenges are,
Researchers and domain experts of ICT and other disciplines should co-
operate with agricultural extension and business.
Development of mobile apps should support the agricultural fields and
their activities.
Mobile apps focus on the peculiarities of particular geographical area.
Mobile apps should provide accurate, certified and validated content
Future mobile apps should cover a great spectrum of agricultural
activities.
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14. Cont…..
To increase mobile agricultural app acceptance and use and receive full
benefits of mobile devices, agricultural stake holders should informed,
educated and trained adequately.
In near future our research will be extended to include the quantitative
evaluation of mobile agricultural apps based on a set of criteria such as
usability, usefulness, reliability, quality of content and aesthetics.
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15. Value added services
IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd
A unique venture
Harness the power of telecom to add value to farm sector
Benefits of mobile telephony and market
Affordable mobile handsets bundled with Airtel mobile connection and free
voice message.
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16. BSNL- Mandi on Mobile Service -UP
Farmers able to know rates of agricultural commodities
Voice based
Timely and relevant information
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17. Rubber Board, India- Market Price by SMS
Provides national and international rates of natural rubber through sms
SMS updates about global and domestic markets.
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18. SMS Service to Farmers by the Department of
Agriculture - Haryana State
Free of cost SMS service to sort out agricultural related problems.
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19. Applications
AgriFone
AgriFone is an application developed for agriculture sector by a third Party.
It addresses the needs of farmers, agricultural workers, agribusinesses and
input suppliers.
It provides convenient and easy-to-use tools for farmers on cheap mobile
phones.
Unique feature of AgriFone is one-to-one, one-to-many and peer-to-peer
exchange of text, voice and images amongst mobile subscribers. This
application was used in Maharashtra/India.
AgriFone is not used commercially.
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20. mKRISHI
mKrishi is a joint platform integrating different stakeholders in provisioning
agriculture services in local language. Farmers can send queries to agriculture
experts and receive replies in personalized or relevant form. It was used in
India. This is a proprietary solution.
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21. INTERACTIVE VOICE RESPONSE SERVICE (IVR)
Interactive Voice Response service (IVR) provides agriculture related
information and was launched by Mobilink, Telenor, Ufone and Zong to target
rural customers in Pakistan. This service is launched only to facilitate farmer
community but was not able to generate sizeable revenue therefore this
service is currently discontinued.
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22. ESOKO (ESOKO, 2011)
ESOKO is mobile based system developed for sending SMS to farmers to
provide them agricultural information.
Live market Feed
Direct SMS marketing
Scout polling
Profiling and marketing
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23. E-ARIK
• Information about crop cultivation and other agricultural
practices.
• Baseline information from relevant agriculture and rural
developmental departments of government.
• Specific information on government schemes such as
farmer welfare programmers.
• Day to day market information and weather forecasts.
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24. Agriculture Mobile Application - Kisan Suvidha
Kisan Suvidha is an omnibus mobile app developed to
help farmers by providing relevant information to
them quickly.
With click of a button, they can get the information on
weather of current day and next 5 days, dealers,
market prices, agro advisories, plant protection, IPM
Practices etc.
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25. Pusa Krishi
It promotes Agribusiness Ventures through technology
development and commercialization for everyone from a
corporate to an individual farmer.
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26. MKisan Application
It enables farmers and all other stakeholders to obtain
advisories and information being sent by experts and
government officials at different levels through mkisan
portal without registering on the portal.
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27. Shetkari Masik Android App
The Android app for Shetkari magazine has a very simple
interface and requires mobile internet or Wi-Fi
connectivity to register and download the issues. Once
downloaded, the magazine can be read without internet
connectivity.
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28. Farm-o-pedia
 Get suitable crops as per soil and season
 Get crop wise information
 Check weather in your area
 Manage your cattle
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29. Bhuvan Hailstorm App
Photograph of field with latitude and longitude.
Name of Crop
Date of sowing
Date of likely harvesting
Source of irrigation
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30. Crop Insurance mobile app
Crop Insurance mobile app can be used to calculate the
Insurance Premium for notified crops based on area,
coverage amount and loan amount in case of loan farmer.
It can also be used to get details of normal sum insured,
extended sum insured, premium details and subsidy
information of any notified crop in any notified area.
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31. AgriMarket
This app automatically captures the location of person
using mobile GPS and fetches the market price of crops in
those markets which falls within the range of 50 km.
There is another option to get price of any market and
any crop in case person does not want to use GPS
location.
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32. Horticulture - Sikkim Horticulture and Cash
Crop Assistance
This app is used for submitting online application for obtaining
Departmental assistance by farmers of Sikkim.
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33. Animal Husbandry - Sikkim Allotment of Breeding
Bull
This app is used for making request for allotment of breeding bull under
Animal Husbandry department of government of Sikkim.
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34. Application for Poultry
Developed by CDAC, Mumbai. The Animal Husbandry
Department of Himachal Pradesh has introduced Backyard
Poultry Scheme under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme,
where low input technology birds of colored strain but
disease resistant type are supplied to the farmers of the
state.
With the help of this app, an applicant who wants to
obtain assistance under Poultry Chick and Backyard
Poultry Schemes of Govt. of Himachal Pradesh can apply
online.
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35. Pashu Poshan
NDDB has developed android based software that can be used
on phones as well as tablets. With the help of this software
balanced ration is formulated while optimizing the cost
considering animal profile.
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36. Other Useful Apps for Farmers - MSCS (Multi State
Cooperative Societies)
MSCS has developed an android based mobile app that
can be used on phones as well as tablets.
With the help of this app Cooperative Societies know the
status of their registration and people can search the
registered society in their location.
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37. Strengths
Portability
Personalized information
Two way communication
Timely delivery of information
Location specificity
Media mix
Increased access to public info via RAS
Both online and offline access
Free or minimum charges for access
Broad –based information coverage
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38. Weaknesses
Using mobile phone for accessing agricultural
information is still not very popular
Technical illiteracy among clients and extensionists
its limits scope
Minimum use of smart phones by rural farmers,
which limits farmers access to web portals, videos,
animations etc.
Cost
Relevancy of information in a personal context
Amount and type of content delivered is limited
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39. Opportunities
Mobilizing women
Encouraging an entrepreneurial culture among
young people through developing new apps and
services.
Partnership among multiple stakeholders
increases the opportunity for better service.
Wide reach
Group –based approach
Increasing mobile phone presentation in rural
areas
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40. Challenges
Reaching resource-poor, small-scale, and marginal land
holding farmers
Scaling up of pilot projects
Long-term sustainability
Authenticity of content
Relevant content development
Access to infrastructure (roads, market, credit,
electricity, and so on) and lack of network coverage
Inclusion of women
Awareness creation on potential of mobile phone in
RAS
 Lack of research on impact
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41. Research Studies
Bhuvaneswaran (2018) study on ICT enabled services reveled
that nithra agriculture mobile app and sms services of ICAR KVKs
are utilized by farmers of erode district for smart farming.
Christina (2017) reported that most of respondents stratified
with the language used by the mobile service.
Prabha (2017) found that majority of the farmers preferred
message on crop diseases fertilizer application, pesticide and
weather forecasting. 41
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42. Implementation
Baseline survey
Developing partnership
Content management system (CMS) and device
dependency
Infrastructure
Staff selection
Scalability and sustainability goals 42

43. Cost Involved
Infrastructure development and procurement
Recruitment of human resources
Awareness creation and training
Maintenance of infrastructure
Costs to generate, curate, evaluate, localise and customise infromation.
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44. Impact of mobile based agte advisory services
Mobile phones have reduced producer price dispersion and ensured higher
market participation by farmers.
Helped to reduce wastage, increase the number of transactions.
Information accessed through mobile phones has strengthened local.
likelihoods are helped to preserve natural resources.
It has also increased general awareness and networking opportunities.
It can significantly improve rural women income and livelihood opportunities.
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45. Conclusion
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