ICT in
agriculture is an emerging field focusing on the enhancement of agricultural
and rural development in India
However, all the
ICT initiatives are not uniform with disparities between regions in the level
and quality of telecommunications, information and the effort of individuals,
public and private organizations, and differentiated nature of demand of the
farmers in different areas. As a result, there have been many successes,
failures, lessons learned and experience gained, so far. While these initiatives are intended to
address the needs of the farmers through ICT, their actual usage and their
ability to bring significant impact on the farm productivity and socio-economic
development of the intended beneficiaries is to be understood.
It is relatively
unknown as to whether the ultimate beneficiaries actually use the facilities
provided for them meaningfully to meet their needs. The common problems in
adoption of ICT in rural segments are ICT illiteracy, availability of relevant
and localized contents in their own languages, easy and affordable
accessibility and other issues such as awareness and willingness for adoption
of new technologies among the rural peoples etc.
One critical
aspect in the usage of ICT’s for farmers and their groups, as seen in some of
the ICT driven initiatives, is the involvement of human interface at the last
mile indicating that there is a human dependency in transmission of
Information/Knowledge to farmers.
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