Assessing Mobile Technology Usage for Knowledge Dissemination among Farmers in Punjab

Abstract

Agriculture-based precise and accurate information needs to be disseminated promptly to farmers so that better decisions such as managing farm fields, making continuous and scientific changes in their production systems and grabbing advantage of market opportunities can be made. In this paper, mobile technology is assessed for the agriculture information dissemination system. A survey has been conducted to find out potential technology, related to the use of the Internet and mobile among farmers in the state of Punjab in India, to deliver agriculture-related information to them. Results show that agricultural information system needs to be developed based on the mass communication technology such as mobile systems. It is also noted that localization and native language of farmers are the concerns to be incorporated into the systems. It has been focused that the use of soft-computing techniques in conjunction with communication networks, for inferring the decision regarding best practices for agricultural activities, is helpful in the development of these systems.

Keywords:

• agricultural information system
• information dissemination
• soft computing
• ICT in agriculture

Notes on contributors

Er. Lokesh Jain is Assistant Professor in School of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, College of Agricultural Engineering & Technology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India. His field of interest includes information and communication systems, mobile and web based application development. He has overall experience of 10 years in teaching and research. He has joined as Scientist in Indian Council of Agricultural research and has been posted at Central Institute for research on Cotton Technology, Mumbai in year 2003. In 2005, he joined Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana and has served there till now. He is actively involved in the development and implementation of various software applications for the university.

Dr. Harish Kumar is working as Associate Professor in CSE at University Institute of Engineering & Technology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. He had worked in the IT industry prior to adopting academia as a profession. He has also executed sabbatical project at Infosys Technologies as a member of their development team in PED division. His areas of interest include Mobile Ad hoc networks, Traffic Profiling, Next Generation Networks, Software Test Estimation, Open source software, and e-learning. He has more than 40 publications to his credit. He has also delivered several lectures on various topics during workshops/ conference at national as well as international forums.

Prof. R.K. Singla is Professor of Computer Science and Applications at Panjab University, Chandigarh. He has held many IT-related positions including Chairman, Department of Computer Science & Applications; Coordinator, TIFAC-DST. His experience covers large mainframes, mini/micro-computers, and several types of specialized equipment. He has programmed in over a dozen languages including Visual Basic, C/C++, COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal, assembly language. He has the experience of working on several platforms (PC-DOS, PC-Windows, VAX-VMS, SUN-Solaris, HP-UX and PC-Linux) using a variety of development tools and application packages. He has extensive experience with real-time integration of applications, IT administration, platform conversions (hardware and software), web technology, and electronic communications. His current research interests include Scientific Computing, Wireless Networks, Open Source Software, Information Security and Software Cost Estimation. He has more than 45 publications in journals and conferences.