Progressively technology increases the impact on agriculture in terms of extension education, marketing, linkages etc. Farmers want to link with technology for better farming practices. He wants to know different schemes for agriculture and para-agriculture activities, market rate of commodities, new farming machineries…
Technologies like TCS Mobile Agro Advisory System and Spoken web by Sajjata sangh have gone beyond customer care services on phone. Through these services farmers can get answers in whatever means they want like in writing, by listening, by hearing. Even they can receive the advice and information as ‘voice SMS’ in their local languages. Now in big surprise, the technology is invented to know the water requirement of plant is ‘crops can tell farmers they need water’ which is developed for NASA. The farmers just need to clip a tiny sensor to their potato or corn leaves. When the plant feels it needs some moisture, data from the leaves will be sent wirelessly over the Internet to computers linked to irrigation equipment.
But the questions remain same that at what level the technology will improves the crop production or increase the income of small and marginal farmers or increase the standard of living or reduce the problem of food security…
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I believe technology has a great role to play in development. But it is not going to happen by default. Generally the developers of a technology, the people who disseminate it and the people who use it are all different. So the people who disseminate the technology are critical to the effectiveness of it.
ReplyDeleteWe must ensure that technology is used:
i) for the betterment of the most deprived of farmers; for this to happen, technology must be made simple and affordable
ii) for the betterment of the earth's environment, i.e, technology while enhancing the efficiency, must consume less resources too.