Implementation Methods

Principal Objective 1:

The content organization, Agropedia, will be based on the read/write web exemplified by the Wikipedia, and suitable such interfaces will be used. Expert contributions will be received in this space, reviewed and stored for access. The content will be organized for ease of search using audio-visual or textual query. The FAO’s AGROVOC, world’s premier agricultural thesaurus will be used as the equivalent of ontology basis for this organization. The leader for this set of activities will be the IIT-Kanpur, joined in by GBPUAT, UAS-Dharwad and ICRISAT. A number of capacity strengthening sessions in the use of these approaches will be organized as well.

Principal Objective 2:

An online Q&A forum will be used to receive queries from the farmers and their facilitators and experts will be able to provide responses to queries that can be mined at a later stage for possible re-use. The categorization of Q&A entries will also be based on AGROVOC.

These two will be supplemented by data capture systems on market prices of select commodities (wherever possible, directly from the web) and on key weather and soil parameters from select field sites. The aggregation of the content organization, Q&A and dynamic data is at the core of the knowledge organization that permeates the farmer-extension-research continuum. This is based on two partners’ ongoing programs, namely, the AGROPEDIA (IIT-Kanpur) and the aAQUA (IIT-Bombay). The leader for this set of activities will be the IIT-Bombay, joined in by GBPUAT, UAS-Dharwad, ICRISAT and NAARM.

There will be a sizeable volume of capacity strengthening and awareness building activities among agricultural experts in the advanced use and design of this content organization, and ICT experts will use this channel to acquire close knowledge of field realities and design issues arising from them.

Principal Objective 3:

The delivery services will combine this knowledge organization with open access repositories on specific research information and practices of re-usable learning objects to provide a host of information and training services to extension personnel and farmers. These arrangements will build further on the hub-and-spokes models already extant in government extension services and in a number of Indian ICT4D projects. The model already operationalised by the IIITM-Kerala, the KISSAN, will be the basis for linking the knowledge organization to the delivery and exchange services. Activities will include design of suitable software applications in agriculture, training and capacity strengthening activities in the areas of multi-media studio design, mobile telephony-based interactions and in portal management. This component will also link closely with Objective 6 below.

This will be led by IIITM-Kerala and joined in by all the partners.

Principal Objective 4:

Agricultural production processes and their impacts vary over spatial scales. Innovations that improve the efficiencies of the production processes, and contribute to raising incomes and sustainable agricultural development, need to be based increasingly on spatial data and knowledge solutions that are scaleable (field to farm to village to region). Thus, in addition to knowledge organization for extension, the institutions of NARS also need to develop the capacity to internalize spatial data and knowledge solutions in their technology generation and transfer processes. The need for spatial knowledge organization arises at two levels: the institution level (eg: SAU) and the local village knowledge centre level. At the SAU level, spatial knowledge organization can be structured into a Geospatial Library to facilitate spatial data search and use. At the village level, knowledge organization can structured in the framework of a rural GIS to promote participatory and site specific decision-making among rural communities. At both levels, the spatial knowledge solutions will need to be robust, interactive and open source.

Activities in this area will be led by NAARM..

Principal Objective 5:

There will be a sizeable volume of capacity strengthening and awareness building activities among agricultural experts in the advanced use and design of this content organization, and ICT experts will use this channel to acquire close knowledge of field realities and design issues arising from them.

The knowledge delivery services are anchored in the KVKs identified on this project. The ICT-mediated content support will be available to the KVK personnel and through them to the state extension personnel in the district. The normal channels of the KVK in extending information support to farmers will be further strengthened with the infusion of ICT platforms and devices, including mobile phones and PC’s where appropriate. The ICAR extension experts have accepted the possibility of linking a KVK with at least one man and a woman from a village. This will be ingrained in the project activities wherever feasible. At least these two individuals will be enabled to join capacity building processes by extension partners in various “literacy” matters, such as (but not limited to) soil care, water management, climate and weather issues, market and information transaction processes and fodder issues. These village youth can be expected to perform important gateway functions between the farmers, individually or in special purpose groups, and with the knowledge organization and services and in real time meetings with extension personnel. This is how the knowledge continuum will be formulated on this project. ICRISAT’s experience in the VASAT (www.vasat.org) project is an example in this regard. ICRISAT will lead the activities in this area and will be joined in by all the partners.

Principal Objective 6:

The importance of integration of a host of technologies deployed on this project cannot be underestimated. Without an adequate level of integration, the scale up of the results of this project would be unviable.

There is a large engineering component to this objective, and it will be useful to ingrain the learning from multi-institutional projects in India where the organizational ethos was highly varied. The consortium leader will organize special purpose dialogues with major system engineers/integrators such as the NIC and the IL&FS in the public sector and with the TCS and similar others in the private sector. The architecture developed by the IIITM-K for KISSAN will be considered as the starting point in these dialogues. All the partners will join in and select NARES and ICT partners will be invited to these discussions.