The Punjab Agriculture Department (PAD) is buying 600 lap tops for its officers for compilation of records and dissemination of latest agriculture technologies to the farmers and connectivity with the experts working in different universities and agriculture institutions for their expert opinion.
The departmental sources said that the contract had been awarded to a company for providing latest 'Lenovo' laptops worth Rs 72,000 a piece. He said it is expected that supply of these latest laptops will be started within 60 days. "Around six companies took part in the bid for provision of these IT equipment and we got these machines tested from the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) for their suitability for the work to be carried out by the officers of the department," the sources added.
The Agriculture Extension 2.0 Project worth over Rs 4.3 billion envisages a comprehensive soil testing plan in the province and linking that information to ICT-enabled extension staff and system to provide diagnostic-fed informed extension advice to the farmers.
The project is expected to reach out to 200,000 farmers in the first year of implementation across 24,000 villages in rural Punjab. In a period of five years, the project will reach out to 5.2 million farmers and would provide advice on issues like time of sowing, promotion of correct and certified seed, balanced use of fertilizers, soil health and conservation agriculture, promotion of horticulture crops, agriculture mechanization, mechanical spray and techniques, crop intensification, harvesting and post-harvesting techniques, plant protection, pest forecasting and alerts etc. The major impact of the project is expected to be achieved through adoption of balanced use of fertilizers and will fetch additional benefits through adoption of better agriculture practices.
"The project is expected to bring a paradigm shift in the agricultural sector of the province in which one soil sample will be collected from every 10 acres and will not miss a single farmer of the province," claimed Director General Agriculture (Extension) Dr Anjum Ali Buttar while talking to Business Recorder. He said the project would include all the 36 districts of the Punjab province and would specifically encompass GIS mapping of 2.8 million acres of irrigated farmlands. The soil specific data, obtained from agriculture diagnostics laboratories based on the testing of collected samples, will then be added as a layer to the geo-referenced map of selected districts. Other layers will include boundaries of mauzas and farms as well as climate and meteorological data, crop patterns, tube well and irrigation data as well as disease data.
The data will then be consolidated and analyzed in various ways to gain meaningful insights and will be made available through a web-based platform. A dedicated helpline would encourage farmers to reach out to their respective agriculture officers in case they need any advice. The field force, comprising the agriculture officers and field assistants backed by subject-matter experts, would then access this pool of information through various means to provide meaningful farm-specific advice to farmers.
The data can also be used to pro-actively communicate with farmers through SMS, robo-calls and other means. The data will be shared through mobile application with agriculture officers who are point of contact among farmers, extension workers and subject specialists for providing on time advice and support this extension program. Farmers will also be assigned unique identification codes, which would be used to track any legacy data, in terms of his/her previous problems and issues.
Once the farmer accesses the helpline, ideally his first point of contact would be his respective agriculture officer (provided he punches in his unique ID or calls from a pre-stored number). In case the farmer is calling from a new number, or has forgotten his ID or is accessing the helpline for the first time, he will be taken to a call center which will register the farmer, issue him a unique ID and would then transfer him to his respective agriculture officer.
The agriculture officer will retrieve the farm-specific information from the system, through his portable device, and would advise the farmer accordingly. In case the issue remains unresolved, the agriculture officer can either send a field assistant for soil testing or inspection/field observation, or refer him to a subject-matter specialist.
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