Theses and Dissertations
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Item Metadata only Study of various information and services provided by different service providers in the agriculture domain(Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, 2011) Vardia, Kotish; Chaudhary, Sanjay; Reddy, P.V.This study titled “Study of various Information and Services provided by Different Service Providers in the Agriculture domain” was done under organization Rallis India ltd. Rallis has been in regular contact of farmers. It felt that farmers are in need of technical information from time to time. If some service can be provided by Rallis end to help farmers to increase their income. This will eventually help Rallis in having a satisfied customer base. This study was conducted to know about some of prominent information and service provider in market. Three information and service providers were chosen in study viz. Reuters Market Light, IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited, mana Gromer Retail Outlets. The study looks for details like information provided by services provider, cost of service, duration of usage, satisfaction level of users and further improvements required in service. A structured questionnaire was prepared to take responses from subscribed farmers. Besides this information requirements and medium for information transfer views were also taken from subscribed and unsubscribed farmers. Reuters Market Light has been working in 13 states of India. They are providing information related to weather forecast, market prices and some general agriculture information’s and research innovations. The farmers interviewed were using service since duration from 1 month to 2 years. Overall 90 percent of farmers were satisfied with service and had no literacy related issue with SMS. SMS were sent in regional languages. Farmers required improvements in service like more markets be included in service, more precise weather forecast and general agriculture information should be included. IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (ISKL), collaboration between IFFCO and Airtel has developed Green Sim card for farmers. These Sim cards receive five free voice cells related to agriculture everyday as value added service. The active base of this service was found to be low. Farmer switch over to other subscribers after using talk time of sim cards and this service is limited only for Green Sim cards customers. 50 percent of surveyed active user farmers were not satisfied with service. Calls were not properly scheduled and once calls not received, information is lost for that day. Call retrieval and helpline is also provided by IKSL, but farmers are not aware about the facility. Mana Gromer Retail outlets was started by Coromandal Fertilizers to supply agriculture inputs at one place. Coromandal fertilizers have done collaboration with other inputs company to sell their produce from the outlets. Farmers’ subscriptions were done to provide services. These services include fertilizers at fixed prices, concession on inputs except fertilizers, free soil testing, accidental insurance and optional life insurance. Farmers were more interested to get fertilizers at fixed prices rather than other services. Fertilizers purchase was clubbed with pesticides sale resulting in additional burden on farmers. Soil test reports were not received by farmers. Farmers were not much satisfied with service due to faults in soil tests, insurances and limited service by outlets. Both subscribed and unsubscribed farmers were in need of information related to agriculture. Disease and pest information, weather information, market prices, fertilizer availability information, Government schemes and policies are some of the main information requirements among farmers. A precise customized information service requirement is felt among farmers. Views were taken from farmers about medium through which information could be provided to them. Various medium like SMS voice calls, field visit by experts, Helpline and SMS came out to be most favorable options by farmers. Rallis has already have crop advisors for field visits. There are information’s that can’t be even provided by crop advisors on a consistent basis. Crop advisors would not be able to interact with all farmers daily. So a helpline and SMS based advisory system is most likely to be useful for farmers. The information provided by this system, would be customized as per the requirements of farmers. The content will mainly consist of market prices, weather information, general agriculture information and government schemes. The market informationcan be taken from some organization on a regular basis. Weather information can be made available from collaboration with ISRO or Indian Meteorological Department. General agriculture information can be prepared by Rallis itself. These all content information can be sent to farmers via SMS gateways or GSM modems. This information can be provided to farmers as subscriptions schemes. Overall this service would be able to fill the gape of information among farmers. This service can also be a profitable business venture to join the agriculture services domain of Rallis.Item Metadata only Market research for mango crop and multimedia information system on integrated pest and nutrient management(Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, 2011) Sabhaya, Sandip; Chaudhary, Sanjay; Jain, VikashBanana crop is one of the major crop in Gujarat as per productivity concern Gujarat comes 2nd in India. Vadodara, Anand, Kheda, Narmada, Bharuch, Surat, Valasad, Bhavnagar, Junagadh are Banana growing district in Gujarat. Banana production for export relies on only a few varieties, which were selected for their high yields, durability in long distance transport, consistent quality and unblemished appearance. Today’s scenario due to Good quality of Banana in Gujarat a lots of foreign traders comes for imports banana from the Gujarat. Consumption of Fertilizer is huge in Banana and its make productivity. Diseases and pest occurrence is less in Banana. Pesticides help to reduce crop losses by controlling diseases and insects and thereby increase revenue for farmers. Plant needs 16 elements for batter growth and developments. Plant take C, H, O, from the air and soil and NPK from the basic fertilizer like Urea, DAP, MOP etc. but still Micronutrients like Fe, Cu, Mn, Zn, Bo, Al, Mo etc. Need for batter developments and yield. Two sampling methods were followed e.g. purposive sampling and snow ball sampling. Farmers were interviewed in the two districts where the different molecule for banana was used. All distributors and selected dealers who liquidate different molecule for banana were interviewed to know the market position of Rallis and which molecules and companies are dominant in market and how much farmers are spending for fungicide, pesticide and plan growth nutrients per acre to market under market potential. To find out market potential: total banana cultivated area multiply with average expenses of input application. Bayer has strong business in fungicide due to efficient dealers and distributors in Narmada district. Leading producer of carbandazime i.e. BASF captures maximum area (around 20%) for it business equivalent to syngenta in narmada district. While in vadodara district it covers area about 43% because of following three products; propaconazole, diphinoconazole, coperoxycloride. Carbofuran 3G and Phorate 10G are common molecule for controlling Nematode. 70% farmers are using Carbofuran 3G for controlling Nematode. Carbofuran 3G is concern FMC, Tata rallis are Major Player than after Annu and local companies are playing emerging roll. Area like chain in vadodara district most of farmers are using phorate 10G for nematode control. Some farmers of vadodara district are using biological practices (Neem granule) for nematode control. Banana crop is water loving crop for weed control farmers are use to spray Glyphosate 41% because of its is systemic herbicidecide it kills weed from the root and in area like chain farmers are use to spay parquet dichloride 24% because of it is contect fungicide it gives quick results but 60-70% farmers are using Glyphosate 41% for weed control and companies like Monsanto, Excel are major player because of monsento was initiator of glyphosate 41% that is why farmer uses its product more and Syngenta is well known for parquet dichloride 24%. Complex fertilizer like 12:61:0, 13:0:45, 19:19:19 are common molecule and Ranade, Subhlabh and Nagarjuna are major player. Companies like Orchem, Areis are playing major roll for micro nutrients. Orchem is doing very different way of marketing. They are direct consulting to farmers and selling them and also those who farmer are purchase orchem micronutrients they provide consultancy free of charge throughout crop life. Straight fertilizer like Calcium nitrates, Zink sulphate boron are most used molecules. Day by day boron application is increasing because boron reduces fruit cracking problem at the time when farmers want to gain good weight of banana bunch. Lokmangal, subhlabh and Nagarjuna are major player. For Tata rallis PGN sector is virgin sector for banana crop. Know the farmer’s Buying behavior, different question asked to the farmers. First question was Trend of Application of Agricultural Input. Farmer’s first preference 60 and 70 percent of farmers prefer to apply chemicals before introduction of disease because disease like sigatoka needs control as curative measure (application of fungicide before disease occurrence) and for second Preference 57 and 60 percentage of farmer believe on dealer followed by third see in neighbor field in both Vadodara and Narmada district. Second question was Reasons influencing purchasing decision. Farmer’s first Preference 43 and 46 percent farmers prefer farmers meeting as a best promotional activity than after for second choice individual visit followed by opinion leaders Demonstration and opinion leaders comes. Fourth question was campaigning best for new product launch. Farmer’s first Preference 45 and 47 percent farmers meeting followed by Video show and jeep campaigning as best activity to launch any product as per farmers views in Vadodara and Narmada district. As per analysis and my interaction with farmers I seen average farmers are spending 800 -1100 Rs /acre for controlling disease (sigatoka and collar rot), average Farmer are spending 900-1500 Rs /acre for controlling nematode and as per PGN concern farmer are spending 1500-3500 Rs /acre. Twelve districts are major Banana growing district og Gujarat and the rest right districts are new emerging area of banana majority area under drip irrigation. Banana crop is very profitable crop now days because from the last three years Banana price hick from the average 90 to 160 due export. Approximately Farmers can get RS 1.5 lacks from the one acre and total cost for one acre (including input and Labor cost) is nearly 35thousand. Farmers are not hesitating to buy a costly product for banana farming they just wants result. So for sigatoka control rallis product like argon has good chance to penetrate in market. Because Argon is costly product but it is more effective. After preparing the best recommendation of cultural practices for Banana crop. Macromedia Flash (software) player for e-extension. Through this service farmer can get knowledge himself. It is very handy to use, Even this system we can put online also, so farmers and dealers can excess. It is audio-visual and in local Language, it took hardly 14Mb. So in future we can prepare this system for all crop in all languages and burn it on 1 CD of 700 MB, it’s very cost effective and innovative way of extension because day by day computers and electronic use are increasing rapidly.Item Metadata only Review of literature study on information and communication technology initiatives in Indian agriculture(Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, 2011) Sahu, Anil Kumar; Sharan, Girja; Jhunjhunwala, Ashok; Prasant, Suma; Ganesan, M.Information and Communication technologies (ICTs) play a vital role in communicating scientific and sustainable farming practices to the farming community in time. In order to analyze and synthesize the research findings on the impact of ICT on the framers, it was determined to collect and review the literature on the existing published results from various sources. The literature review has been designed with the following objectives; to understand the existing ICT efforts in the Indian agriculture scenario; to analyze agriculture advisor information such as cultivation practices /marketing/Government programmes / inputs availability/ others etc; to identify ICT based training for farmers; to review the challenges in implementing ICT initiatives; to analyze issues related to sustainability of ICT efforts in agriculture. Each objective was thoroughly discussed from the result of the paper published. The literature review process was targeted particularly on the impact of ICTs in Indian agriculture. The researcher have collected around 334 papers of which about 150 papers were selected and reviewed in depth suitable research was from internet source as well as electronic journals and websites. At the end, the collected literatures were arranged, explained and summarized according to objective designed. From the literature study it was found that there were 64 ICTs initiatives being implemented in India. Following are the ICT tools/media with number of projects; mobile phone/telephone based (16); SMS based (10);Interactive Voice Response system (IVRS) based (11); radio dial-up and broadcasts (1); Air Radio based (1); communit FM radio based (3); video-conferencing (4); web based (51); multimedia based (19); televison based (20; online video channel based (1); print media based (30; phone base information portal (1) and PDA based (1). The researcher summarized the best one or in some case two ICT projects from each category which has mentioned above. The best ICT projects have been selected on the basis of current studies, award winning and latest innovation Interestingly, it was observed most of the ICT projects being implemented in Tamil Nadu (17) followed by Andhra Pradesh (14), Karnataka (14), Maharashtra (12), Uttar Pradesh (12), Madhya Pradesh (11), Panjab (11), Haryana (10). These projects have come up with the effort of private companies, government, cooperatives, academic institutions and NGOs. With regard to agriculture information, these projects are giving following information: weather data, market price, agri-inputs, pest and disease management, soil testing, cultivation practices, fertilizer scheduling and recommendations, agri-credits, e-agri-trading, crop insurance, cold storage availability, agriculture contents, irrigation techniques, bio-fertilizers, vermi-compost, agri-news, animal husbandary, crops tips, farm machinery, pre-and post-harvest etc. The generic information is also giving such as microfinance, health, life insurance, education, Govt. schemes, e-Governance etc. Apart from agriculture advisory, farmers are also being trained by using suitable ICT tools/media such as multimedia; web based systems and radio dial-up and broadcast. There are various socio-technical challenged has been incurred during implementation of the ICT project. The common challenges were frequent power cut, low bandwidth, poor dial-up connection, poor telephone connectivity, illiteracy and hesitation of farmers, lack of familiarity with computer/OS. In addition to web, multimedia, radio, TV etc. mobile phone is having the number of facilities and options and that would be great scope of innovations. Therefore several ICT projects are now incorporating mobile phone as one of the ICT tools/media. Intervention of GPS, GPRS, IVRS, GIS, Remote Sensing and wireless network technology have created lot of scope to innovate with unique solution for problems existing in Indian agriculture.