To enhance livelihood and income of tribal farmers in Meghalaya, an agro-advisory service has been launched under the programme "Development and Deployment of Mobile Based Agro-advisory System in NorthEast India" at Central Agricultural University, Barapani. This study has accessed the impact of this project in 11 villages of Ri-Bhoi district of Meghalaya by randomly selecting 218 farmers. The study has revealed that the information gathered through agro-advisory service has been very useful and helpful to the farmers. The programme has gained high popularity among the farmers of Meghalaya and a sufficient number of farmers has been found to be benefitted through the agro-advisory service in the crop as well as livestock sectors. Among the crops, the ginger being a cash crop of the state, needs more care right from its planting to harvesting. The agro-advisory on the complete package and practices especially in selection of rhizome, its treatment, maintaining spacing during planting and also tips about proper care during harvesting provided by the experts of agro-advisory has been highly beneficial in production of ginger in the state. Facilitating artificial insemination and vaccination in pig and piglets have encouraged the farmers to have more access to agro-advisory services. Hence, to provide agro-advisory in a sustainable manner, convergence of such types of programmes with state department extension machinery is recommended as it will help uplift the livelihoods of rural tribals in the state.
Meghalaya is one of the major fish consuming states in India, but fish is in short supply in the state due to inadequate domestic production to match its growing demand. Farmers of north-eastern hilly region of India, particularly the Garo Hill farmers are very much in need of scientific information on fish farming techniques, capacity building and training for sustainable fish farming in the area. The present study attempted to develop a mobile-based fishery advisory prototype in Garo Hills of Meghalaya as an alternate method of fishery extension to deliver right information at right time for Garo tribal farmers. Two thousand farmers from 65 villages (1000 farmers each from West Garo Hills District and South West Garo Hills District) were registered in Interactive Voice Response System(IVRS) with their farm details and mobile numbers. The major features of the system were to deliver the farm advisories (Pull Based) and information services (Push Based) using the software platform ‘Interactive Information Dissemination System (IIDS 2.0). The study revealed that majority of the farmers were seeking information on source of fingerling (31.85%), information on training in fisheries (19.32%), feeding management (10.18%) and subsidies/schemes(9.66%) respectively. The seasonal distribution of calls received revealed that majority of queries were received from the farmers during monsoon season. It was also found that clarity (4.5) and usefulness (4.5) of messages ranked highest in terms of average perceived credibility scores in 5point continuum against different parameters. Further, the inclusion of need based training programme and convergence with public and private extension system helped to develop an ICT based Stakeholder Interface (Experts-Line Departments-Fishpreneurs-Fish Farmers) in the region.
To achieve gainful development in agriculture to ensure food security in the north-eastern Himalayan region of India, an initiative was taken to develop mobile phone based agro-advisory system with the objective to empower the farmers by providing right information at right time through Information and Communication Technology mediated extension approach. 2000 farmers and farm women were selected as beneficiaries through snowball sampling method based on certain criteria. The major features of the system to deliver the farm advices (Pull Based) and information services (Push Based) through toll free Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS), Smart Phone Application, Mobile phone and Web based agriculture advisory system. It was found that on an average almost 200 advisories were provided every month, which even shoot up to almost 300 calls per month in the peak Kharif seasons as bulk of the advisories were provided during the months of May to November as most number of calls from the farmers came during the period. Majority of the advisories were provided on fishery management practices (17.32%), source of seed (9.95%), livestock management (9.18%), disease and pest management of crops (8.75%), training information (9.35%), rural development schemes (7.76%) etc. Moreover, the inclusion of need based training component and convergence with different extension functionaries helped to develop an ICT based Stakeholder Interface (Experts-Line Departments-Agripreneurs-Farmers) in the field of agriculture in the region. This alternate extension system also helped to develop better rapport with the farmers and can be replicated in other hilly region of the world.
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