E-Agriculture in Bangladesh:- A spatial skeleton demanding

[Md. Saiful Islam]

Bangladesh has stepped into new era of Digital World with a spectacular vision for making Digital Bangladesh. This vision would be saddled by E-Agriculture involving multidisciplinary initiatives of Agricultural Informatics, Agricultural Development and Entrepreneurship towards building a Hunger-free, Efficient and Resourceful Bangladesh.

The history of ICT use in Bangladesh Agriculture is not so rich. In 2003, Support to ICT taskforce program launched by the Ministry of Agriculture. Perhaps it would be the first initiative to set up an Agricultural Information System. D.Net an NGO, developed an idea of “Pallitathaya Help Centre” in 2005. While implementing, they found it most challenging to understand the problems related to Agricultural Information of rural people. Recently Agricultural Information Service has piloted 10 farmers community based Call Centers in rural areas.

A Route towards Goal:
To harness ICT in Agriculture and Rural livelihood, a conceptual model of E-Agriculture has been formulated. It has been developed considering all available tools in a holistic way.

Proposed structural skeleton of E-Agriculture in Bangladesh:
To accelerate development in Agriculture, the model considers logistic supports, information needs and the way of dissemination especially tuned to key role players in the society.

1. Information User:
Key role players include mainly policy makers, Technology innovators, Academicians or Researchers, Farmers, Traders and Entrepreneurs. Hence the skeleton of E-Agriculture is purposely developed for the following target groups;
(I) The intellectual group, mainly use primary data on most of the skeleton components (as shown in the figure) including technological development and policy issues. They are mainly academicians, researchers, extension experts, consultants and people of high profile. They are equipped with high-speed Internet service and telephony. Any web based interface or a dynamic site hooked to database server following http: or ftp: protocol could fairly handle their information need.

(ii) The Middle class group, are lacking high-speed Internet access and are not able to take advantages directly from the web based interface. Digital media or Offline interface could be developed backed by limited data support could satisfy the information need for this category of people. They may be the Leaders of professional or community groups, Traders, Commodity importers and exporters, Trainers, Extension Personnel, Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (SMEs) and development partners by GO/NGO-bodies at implementation or execution level.
(iii) The community Class group comprises mass people and is considered as the most important key role player in Agriculture. They are mostly illiterate, less educated Farmers, Agricultural commodity traders, Fariahs (middleman handlers), Arotdars (Wholesale marketers) etc. They are lacking of computer literacy.

2. Structural Architecture for information flow:
I. Data and Database:Data like cropped area, yield, fertilizer use, inputs supply, price, insect, disease or pest attack, nutrient uptake, seed, irrigation, land use etc. could be collected from a variety of Departments/organizations. Any user-friendly interface developed on Visual basic or VB.net or similar software powered by Oracle or SQL server would be enough to serve the purpose. Besides the primary, precision data or simulated data might be helpful to the policy makers for decision-making process. Crop simulation data regarding crop yield, plantation timing, fertilizer use, Irrigation, nutrient uptake etc. could be generated by using Crop Modeling Software like CERES, CropGrow, APSIM etc.

II. Collecting data and updating:As data used in Agriculture come from various sources, it needs a good coordination among the data providers. Existing poor coordination among those development partner organizations mostly appears with a difficulty. Government must bring then under a common umbrella to ensure regular update.

III. Strategy and Connectivity:It is desired that Agricultural data should be collected from the root level and be updated from the smallest administrative unit level over the country like Upazilla. Web based software, allow user to update and view data and make relevant queries from any corner of the country if the user is connected to Internet. Slow connectivity would be a problem. Broadband connection (Not everywhere), Internet Service through mobile phone or GPRS/Edge modem would be a good choice. Grameen Phone is operating more than 500 Community Information Center all over the country using GPRS. It would be encouraging to establish local Telecenter or Infotain center (discussed later) in every villages supported by such connectivity.

IV. Service Delivery:
a. Service delivery on Web or from Database: Web interface or website will provide periodically updated information and data in static pages. More specific and customized information or data could be obtained by entering query in the front end or dynamic pages, which will connect user to the database server. Initially only Internet users will be able to reach that service. Gradually it will be made available to mobile phone users via SMS using Location Based Service (LBS) of the Mobile Switching Center (MSC).

b. Telecenter or Call Center: It could be maintained by a folk of smart operators and Agricultural experts. They will be responsible for providing answer to the queries of a farmer or a stakeholder using Web or databases on the server. In case, when information is not available on the database, the operator can redirect the phone to an expert who is attending there for answering variety of questions to provide real time information service. A setup of a Call Center and Toll Free telephone service can make people more interested to get information from Telecenter.
c. Infotain Center or local Telecenter: It could be established in a village or at local market places where people usually get together being equipped with Internet Service, telephony and multimedia projector. People are attracted there for Audio-visual presentations of documentaries, drama, movie and technological know-how. Together with entertainment service, the Infotain operator/facilitator will help them to provide information for free by browsing web, making queries to the database or making phone calls to the Telecenter.

Thus all categories of people can get access to all sorts of Agricultural Information and make them aware of handling their macro/micro-economics more efficiently. Implementing the skeleton of ICT driven Digital Agriculture would be able to flight our developing Bangladesh towards a prosperous Digital Bangladesh.

Submitted as an entry to the telecentre.org Blog Contest.