Ramolla Ashok - Panyal Village, Telangana
Cornell Sathguru Foundation for Development (CSFD) is committed to contributing to sustainable agriculture and development by enhancing capacities, knowledge creation, promoting entrepreneurship and gender equity. To actualize this, CSFD ensures access to important information that helps farmers to adopt good agricultural practices and thereby improve the yields and economic conditions.
CSFD as part of its ICT interventions has introduced AKPS farm advisory services in two villages in Hathnoora Mandal, Telangana and has registered over 500 farmers in July 2019. CSFD has conducted regular awareness programs on the features of the AKPS APP and its utility in farm management, thus enabling farmers to access the right advisory at right time.
While farmers were accessing the advisory since their registration, the impact of the initiative is felt significantly during the lockdown period. To understand the effectiveness of the AKPS from the farmers’ perspective, CSFD had a virtual discussion reaching out to farmers from both the villages.
“weather alerts in June differentiating pre-monsoon and normal monsoon showers was very useful for me to plan field preparation”
The overall feedback indicated that farmers found AKPS to be very useful. Farmers in the villages have endorsed that they have been receiving timely information on best agricultural practices which played a crucial role in effective crop management.
However, due to the challenges of low literacy, some farmers requested more voice messages than text messages. As the voice messages come randomly especially when farmers are in the fields, they opined that they tend to miss important notifications. Therefore they preferred voice messages to be delivered at a specified timing to enable them to listen to the message and put it into action at the appropriate time.
Agricultural produce being an essential commodity, despite the COVID crisis, 
agricultural activities continued in the villages. However stringent physical distancing measures have significantly impacted the knowledge transfer by the extension officers who normally visit the villages frequently and mobilize farmers to disseminate information. Given this, during the lockdown period, AKPS has ensured farmers to access meaningful agro advisory.
During the lockdown, AKPS continuously disseminated information to all the registered users of the app. AKPS has been sending timely advice on rainfall, sowing suitable high varieties of crops for Kharif and Rabi seasons, fertilizer and pest management, correction of micronutrient deficiencies, nursery management etc. Besides, during COVID peak times, for farmers’ safety, AKPS has also shared information on best and safe practices that farmers should adopt during the pandemic.
“voice messages were useful as I could hear and understand the suggestion but I did not find SMS alerts useful as I can’t read”
They said that they have received the information through SMS and voice alerts enabling them to take action immediately. They have mentioned that direct services from village agriculture officers from Krishi Vignan Kendra (KVK) and District Agricultural Advisory and Transfer of Technology Centres (DAATTCs) are handy, but they saw AKPS as a great resource to receive useful information on their phones especially during COVID days where social distancing is imperative.
Kothlapuram Vittal from Panyal opined that “advisory on cotton and paddy especially on pest and disease management was very useful”. Byagari Suvarna from Panyal shared that “weather alerts in June differentiating pre-monsoon and normal monsoon showers was very useful for me to plan field preparation” Buchi Reddy a progressive farmer from Badampet, mentioned that applying high dosage of pesticides is a huge concern, “normally we depend on the input dealer to recommend pesticides for the crop, but at times it becomes either over or wrong dosage causing harm to crops and eventually to human beings, but through APKS we are getting accurate dosage required for protecting the crops”.
Koppula Anjamma from Panyal said that “voice messages were useful as I could hear and understand the suggestion but I did not find SMS alerts useful as I can’t read”. While Golla Krishna also said voice messages are useful but he misses the calls at times especially when he is in the field.
AKPS is ICT tool that provides accurate and timely information to farmers on crop management. Farmers can register free of cost through toll-free number – 1800 4253141 to receive both text and voice messages. Also, this application would allow farmers to send text, voice, images and videos of the field along with their queries by using a smartphone. The AKPS can be downloaded through UMANG application and login through the registered and verified mobile number. The AKPS was developed by The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Government of India, Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU) Guntur, National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), Hyderabad and Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad (MICA) as an alternative ICT model to meet the information needs of Indian farmers. District Agricultural Advisory and Transfer of Technology Centres (DAATTCs) would transfer the new improved and advanced technologies in Agriculture and communicate the updated information to the farming community through this APP.
The advisories sent through AKPS were accessible, adoptable and useful to the farmers as the advisories were mostly need-based in problem solving and preventive in nature. CSFD highly appreciates Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU) for providing access to the APKS application for CSFD’s interventions.
Author:
Raja Rajeswari
Associate Vice President – Development
