Shillong, June 9: Aiming at empowering farmers by providing cultural related information throug mobile phones, Media Lab Asia along with College of Post Graduate Studies (Central Agricultural University) launched Mobile Based Agro-Advisory System in North East India (m4agriNEI) at the College of Post graduate studies, Umiam near here on Saturday.
The launching of the m4agriNEI comes as a blessings to the farmers of the state as they can now keep themselves abreast with agro based information.
The College of Post graduate Studies is the prime agency for the implementation of the pilot project in Meghalaya and will provide advisory services to the farmers.
Highlighting about the project Dr TS Anurag, Media Lab Asia said that the m4agriNEI is a pull and push based system where agriculture related information can be pulled or pushed by farmers using their mobile phones.
Dr Anurag also said that this system allows transmitting the data through voice, text, images and small videos from both end (farmers to expert and back). Through this system the farmers can also call to the get agro advisories.
m4agriNEI is using an integrated platform namely “Interactive Information Dissemination System (IIDS)” to enable the farmers to interact with the experts through multiple models namely Toll Free IVRS, Smart Phone Application and Interactive Web Portal, he added.
Besides, Dr R Saravanan, College of Post Graduate Studies informed that the system will be connected to a centralized database with information of farm, farmer and their previous transactions.
Initially the target is to cater around 5000 farmers from three districts of Meghalaya which includes East Khasi Hills, Ri Bhoi and west Garo Hills.
Interestingly, m4agriNEI services are available to the registered farmers from Ri-bhoi, East Khasi and West Garo hills district. So far, 1800 farmers database has been digitally documented at m4agriNEI laboratory.
The project was launched by Secretary to the government of India, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology who lauded the initiative to bring about such system.
“Such system will provide proper information to the farmers,” he said adding that farmers will be benefitted.(SP News)
