Development of mobile based fishery advisory prototype: An experience with fisher tribes of Garo Hills in North-Eastern Himalayan region of India

Abstract

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.

Exploring awareness and utilization of agricultural mobile apps among smallholder farmers

“…According to the findings of the study by Asif et al (2017) [1] , 70% of respondents fell into the low mobile phone usage category and found that farmers in the research area have not been using them effectively to gather information about vegetable farming. The study by Lahiri et al (2017) [8] revealed that using a phone to collect agricultural information is not satisfactory, as they use their mobile phones for a variety of personal purposes, but they use them less to get information about farms, which lowers their mobile usage efficiency score for gathering farm information. In many ways, these findings are comparable to those of the current study.…”

Factors influencing mobile phone usage awareness for accessing agricultural marketing information by grape smallholder farmers in Dodoma, Tanzania

“…This restricts real-time access to agricultural marketing information by grape smallholder farmers. Mishra et al (2020) and Lahiri et al (2017) claim that smallholder farmers still have a limited understanding of mobile phones use for accessing agricultural marketing information. Therefore, mobile phone usage awareness is paradoxically debilitating smallholder farmers’ efforts to access agricultural marketing information.…”

THE VALUE OF NON-TIMBER FOREST PRODUCTS (NTFPs) IN PROMOTING INDIA'S RURAL LIVELIHOODS

“…In such situations, the commercial production and use of NTFPs can provide revenue for disadvantaged rural inhabitants and lessen their obligations in terms of money and daily living (Lahiri, 2016). Adequate conservation strategies and policies should be developed to offer both in-situ and ex-situ protection for these NTFPs as an additional safeguard against the loss of biodiversity (Lahiri et al, 2017).…”