Experiences of Building
TM
eSagu
(An IT-based Personalized Agro-Advisory System)
Media Lab Asia and IIIT, Hyderabad
P.Krishna Reddy
International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-H)
Gachibowli, Hyderabad-500019, India
E-mail: pkreddy@iiit.ac.in
http://www.esagu.in
Outline
• Organizations
• Crisis in the farming community
• The eSagu solution and its implementation
– Key results and Benefits
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Capacity building/content related problems
Lessons learned
Issues and concerns: future plan
Recommendations
Conclusions
Organizations
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Media Lab Asia (Not-for-profit Organization)
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Set-up and supported by DIT (MC&IT), Govt. of India
Research and Design of ICT-based systems for common man
Primary Healthcare, Education, Livelihood Generation, Empowerment
of Disabled, Rural Connectivity
IIIT, Hyderabad, India (Deemed University)
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Educational and research institution, started in 1998
To produce highest quality manpower: Researchers, Technologists,
Entrepreneurs
To produce research, technologies & products that make a difference to
society and industry
– UG, PG and PhD programs in computer science and electronics.
– Inter-disciplinary research centres
Personal Information Systems (PISs)
• A research agenda of Information System researchers
– Creation of Personal Information Systems
• What is PIS ?
– To provides useful personal information to each individual’s
personal information device (PID) in a timely manner.
– A PID can be PDA, Handheld PC, Laptop; Equipped with wireless
network connection
• Main Challenge:
– Developing a Personal Information System to provide
agricultural advice for each farm.
– Farmers may not have PID !
eSagu is a PIS for Farmers
• eSagu is an IT-based Personalized agroadvisory system
– Personalized
• Provides Personalized agro-advice to farmer’s door-step.
– Regular
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• Advice is provided regularly (once in a week)
Query-less: Farmer need not ask a question
Timely: Provides the advice within 24 to 36 hours
Cost-effective: Can be made sustainable with a nominal
subscription fee
Feedback: two way communication
Powered by IT: Record keeping, availability, reliability
Scalable and can be developed on the existing infrastructure
Background
Crisis in farming community
• Indian farming community is in severe crisis.
• There are several factors
– Seed failures
– Adulteration in pesticides
– Shortage of inputs
–Unscientific practices
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Unfavorable markets
Pest outbreaks
Unfavorable weather conditions
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Motivation: Unscientific practices
• Farmers are using untimely, unnecessary,
excessive pesticides and fertilizers.
• Consequences
– Debt trap
– Deterioration Public Health
– No demand in international market
– Environment pollution
– Ecological imbalance
Regarding Existing Extension
• Role of “agriculture extension wing”
– Dissemination of both advanced agriculture
expert advice to the farming community.
technology and
• Exiting extension methods
– News papers, broadcast media (radio and television), organizing
seminars and gatherings, Training and visit, call centers, Web
portals
• Problems with the existing methods
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Do not cover all farms/farmers
Very generic; No personalization
No accountability
No timeliness
No feedback mechanism.
Observation
• The information Exists !
– ICAR, Agri. Universities, Researchers, Research institutes,
Department of Agriculture
• But, farmers are carrying out unscientific
farming.
• Agricultural knowledge is the cheapest input for increasing
agricultural output.
– Judicious use of inputs, cost minimization and sustainability
• Existing agricultural extension methods need
improvement.
Outline
• Organizations
• Crisis in the farming community
• The eSagu solution and its implementaion
– Key results and Benefits
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Capacity building/content-related problems
Lessons learned
Issues and concerns: future plan
Recommendations
Conclusions
eSagu: basic idea (1)
• Extend developments in IT to agriculture
– Agriculture scientist does not visit the crop.
– Crop photos are brought to agriculture expert.
• As a result, the agricultural expert
– can utilize the time efficiently
– spends less time on good crops and more time
on bad crops.
– can advice more farmers.
– can work during the night !
eSagu: basic idea(2)
• Who will send photographs ?
• Option 1:
– The farmers can send the photographs
• Difficult to implement as several farmers are illiterate
and can not send photographs.
• Option 2:
– Educated and experienced farmers brought in as
coordinators.
– Needs only a few educated and experienced farmers.
– Can be implemented in every village.
eSagu Operation
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Establishment of eSagu main lab and local centers
Coordinators, agriculture scientists and others
Farm registration is completed.
The following steps are repeated.
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Collection of farm status by coordinator
Renaming of photographs at the village
Transmission of CDs to the main system by courier.
Advice preparation by AEs
Transmission of advice to the village center
Explaining the advice to the farmer
eSagu: Demonstration
• We have built an information system
• Web-based Agricultural Information Dissemination
System(web)
• Web-based Agricultural Information Dissemination
System(local)
• Please visit “http://www.esagu.in/” to know the details.
Implementation Summary
• Started in 2004
• Implemented 8000 farms of 16 major crops in
300 villages since 2004 (A.P).
• Operated for 162 fish ponds
• Experiment is on for 20 Shrimp/Prawn ponds
• Service is available for all the farmers
• Service is provided based on subscription fee
and farmers are appreciating the service.
Project Partners and their Role
• Acharya NG Ranga Agricultural University
– Knowledge partner
• Byrraju Foundation, BASIX, Confederation of
Kisan Organizations, Bhagavatula Charitable
Trust
– Operation of eSagu local centers
• JANANI FOODS Pvt. Ltd.
– Business model
• ICICI
– Giving finance to farmers
Key Results
• The farmers are happy with the service.
– Encouraging IPM, judicious use of pesticides and
fertilizers by avoiding their indiscriminate usage.
• Gain
– 2004: Rs. 3,820/- per acre; cost benefit ratio 1:3
– 2005: Rs 3,874/- per acre; cost benefit ratio 1:4.1.
• Turnaround time for advice delivery is 24-36 hours.
• Revenue model has been experimented.
• Multiple service model has been experimented
– Expert Advice, Inputs, finance
Benefits of eSagu (1)
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Quality personalized agro-advice
Regular advice
Query-less system
Feedback based
Scalable system.
It is a cost-effective system.
It can be made self-sustainable
It provides a farm-specific database
Follows a proactive approach
Capacitates rural livelihoods and generates rural
employment.
Benefits of eSagu (2)
• Can be developed on the available infrastructure even
without bandwidth.
• Performance of banking system can be improved.
• Effective agri-insurance can be devised.
• Significantly reduces the lag period between research
efforts to practice.
• Shows a great promise in the era of globalization.
• Standardized products
• Farmer cultivates like an agriculture scientist.
• Makes agriculture deterministic
Recognitions
• Manthan Award 2007
– The eSagu project is the winner of "The Manthan Award 2007 - India's Best
e-Content for Development".
• Best eGovernance project 2006
– Overall winner of CSI (Computer Society of India) Nihilent e-Governance
Awards for the year 2005-06.
• Recognition by Taiwan Think Tank
– Features as a select entry among worldwide latest novel internet applications in the
book "Innovative Application Case Study 2006" published by Institute for
Information Industry, a not-for-profit Taiwan Think Tank for Taiwanese Ministry of
Economic Affairs in Taipei.
• Recognition by NISG
– eSagu has been listed as one of the top three e-Governance projects (the other two
are BHOOMI and SAMPARK) of India in the video film on “Next e Governance Plan”,
National Institute of Smart Governance (NISG) November 2005.
Outline
• Organizations
• Crisis in the farming community
• The eSagu solution and its implementaion
– Key results and Benefits
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Capacity building/content related problems
Lessons learned
Issues and concerns: future plan
Recommendations
Conclusions
Capacity Building Problems
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Agriculture scientists
Coordinators
Computer operators
Farmers
Capacity Building Problems
Agriculture Scientists
• In eSagu, AE must have location specific knowledge and
experience
– Has to be expert regarding diverse crop problems that occur in several agroclimatic situations.
• However, AEs differ in education levels, experience, local
exposure, farm exposure, and know-how regarding agro-climatic
variations.
– New paradigm for agriculture scientists
– The system makes them accountable
• So, new kind of content is required such that
AE can grasp the problem as much as by
going through the content.
What should be the nature of new Content ?
• Relevant, adoptable and actionable.
• Should meet the day-to-day information / operation
requirement of the farmers.
• Due consideration of farmers’ traditional wisdom.
• Should be feedback based for continual improvement.
• Adoptable to the changing needs of the farmers
• In tune with the latest technological developments.
• In close liaison with research institutes, industry and the
farmers.
Main Questions ?
Fresh
agricultural
Graduates
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Locationspecific, crop
specific
capacity
building and
training
eSagu
Agriculture
Expert
Main questions:
• Why such content has not been developed ?
• What is the framework of such location-and
crop-specific content ?
Why such content is not available
or not developed ?
• The content is not available in the ready-made form.
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because such kind of knowledge was not compulsory to operate traditional
extension systems.
• Existing content
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Mostly consisting of text in generic manner.
Only few crops are covered.
Advice is not based on resource potential, biotic and abiotic factors.
Crop specific but not soil, area and variety specific.
No updated information with developments in science & technology.
Farmer’s traditional wisdom is not documented.
Difficult to compare actual farm situation from the content.
Developed content is not based on farmer’s feedback.
No due consideration regarding agro ecosystem analysis.
Lack of understanding of local demand.
Outline
• Organizations
• Crisis in the farming community
• The eSagu solution and its implementaion
– Key results and Benefits
•
•
•
•
•
Capacity building problems
Lessons learned
Issues and concerns: future plan
Recommendations
Conclusions
Issues/Observations
• If followed, the advice is giving significant advantage
• The farmer is unable to implement the advice due to the
following problems.
– Inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) are not available
– Finance is not available.
– Following age-old practices
– Other reasons: weather, labor, or laxity
• Strategy: Provide all services to his/her door-step
About IASP
• It is an integrated agri-service program
planned by Media Lab Asia
• Under IASP, all the agri-related services are
provided at the farmer’s door-step.
• eSagu service is the key service
• Other services
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Finance/banking
Input (fertilizers and pesticides)
Crop-Insurance
Marketing (create a market linkage)
IASP Investment and income
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IASP is a corporate entity under PPP model
• Investment
– Government, Banks, Venture capitalists, donor
agencies, input companies, marketing agencies and so
on
• Income
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eSagu subscription
Financial services
Inputs
Marketing
Other services
Specific Issues and Concerns From
the Project
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Self-sustainability
Technical manpower shortage
Capacity building
Content preparation
Farmer’s indifference
Govt’s non-participation
Lessons Learned
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It is feasible to build a personalized agro-advisory system
With eSagu kind of monitoring, it is possible to improve
the success probability of the crop
It is making positive impact on the farming.
The benefit is significant.
Farmers need a comprehensive system with all the
services
Farmers are unable to pull the information.
– The level of farming is very low.
– Illiteracy, Small farms, Small incomes, age-old practices
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Farmer is depending on several players.
Recommendations
• Every country should come forward to build
eSagu and provide personalized agro-advisories to
farmers.
• Build a self-sustainable system with PPP Model
• Govt should be a facilitator initially
• International organizations should be involved
Conclusions
• eSagu is personalized, regular, query-less
scalable and sustainable agro-advisory system
• eSagu has a potential to help bottom of the
pyramid.
– Touches and benefits every family.
• Provides a cost-effective opportunity to reduce
the farming community’s crisis.
Important Question
• Consider a typical farmer in India. He says
“I have two/three acres (1.5 hectare) of land and I will
provide water for that land. I can also arrange finance
myself. And I will follow/implement whatever agriculture
expert and management expert says, (from the pre-sowing
operations, seed, package of practices, post-harvesting and
marketing). Then how much monthly income can I expect ?”
• As of now, we are not in a position to give concrete answer
in 90 percent of cases.
• Let us work towards providing the concrete answer to that
question through IASP.
THANK YOU