The technologies developed out of research conducted by Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) are taken to the farmers’ fields for assessment by KVKs to ascertain their location specificity under various farming systems….reports Asian Lite News
Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) across the country have conducted 1.12 lakh assessment trials of technologies in farmers’ fields during the last three years, the Parliament was informed on Tuesday.
These KVKs also conducted 7.35 lakh demonstrations on different technologies related to crops, livestock, fisheries, farm machineries and other enterprises during the same time, Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.
The technologies developed out of research conducted by Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) are taken to the farmers’ fields for assessment by KVKs to ascertain their location specificity under various farming systems.
There are 38 KVKs under the control of various state governments, 66 under ICAR institutes, 103 under NGOs, 506 under Agricultural Universities, three under Central Universities, three under Public Sector Undertakings, seven under Deemed to be Universities and five under other educational institutions, Tomar said.
Working with Microsoft
In a bid to improve India’s farm business, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare is coming up with India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA) report, which is being prepared with the help of department’s high level task force.
The ministry has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft India Pvt Ltd to work for the betterment of farmers and their agriculture business. Initially 100 villages have even selected across the nation where Microsoft is working for consolidating agri ecosystem to empower farmers using data Analytics.
This will increase the income of farmers and will improve the efficiency of the Agriculture sector in the country.
“Based on this, the Department is in the process of finalizing a framework for creating Agristack in the country, which will serve as a foundation to build innovative agri-focused solutions leveraging digital technologies to contribute effectively towards increasing the income of farmers and improve efficiency of the Agriculture sector in the country,” the ministry said.
The government had recently identified a few leading technology, agri-tech, startups and invited them to collaborate with them and develop Proof of Concepts (PoC) based on data of select districts, villages.
A public call through the Department’s website was issued inviting proposals for Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
These PoCs will help in understanding the uses of Agristack service and solutions that can be built using available data and some of them, if found beneficial to the farmers will be scaled up at the National level,” the ministry said.