The Punjab Agriculture Department is launching a special 'app' to help farmers interact with agriculture experts to seek advice on improvement of crops, knowing the real time weather conditions and future forecast and have access to watch videos on latest production technologies of different crops.
Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif is likely to inaugurate this programme on Tuesday next where smart phones will also be distributed among growers under Khadim-e-Punjab Kissan Package. The scheme has been named as Connected Agriculture Platform Punjab (CAPP).
Under this scheme, at initial stage 110,000 smart phones will be distributed among registered farmers of Kissan Package and during the next stage all registered farmers will get such phones.
This phase of the scheme has been designed due to absence of a systematic and efficient way to educate/inform the farmers. A man-based slow flow of information always resulted in making hasty and ill-informed decisions by the farmers which lead to financial losses. A first of its kind program in the Asia-Pacific region, CAPP is all about digitizing the small/landless the farmers community.
The Department of Agriculture in collaboration with Telenor and PITB (Punjab Information Technology Board) has developed carefully crafted mobile apps services, keeping in mind its unique target audience which will also enable farmers to apply for agri loans through the PITB-led app that would eliminate patwari and bank agent culture.
The Agriculture Department will also establish 'Facilitation Centres' in collaboration with Telenor Pakistan where farmers will be trained regarding efficient use of Agri apps. Since a majority of the farmers also need education on the use of mechanism, around 500 on-ground training sessions will be conducted in 72 facilitation centres to train 25,000 farmers in 144 tehsils of Punjab.
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