DIC and ICAR signed an MoU
- Digital India Corporation (DIC) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) signed an MoU to provide ‘Demand-Based Tele Agriculture Advisories’ to farmers.
- ICAR and DIC will collaborate to develop and deploy ICT platforms to establish and operate a multi-media, multi-way advisory and communication system for supporting various agricultural activities at the local level.
- To start with, the Interactive Information Dissemination System (IIDS) would be deployed at ICAR which is a push-and pull-based system wherein agriculture-related information can be pulled from the farmers using mobile phones.
- IIDS gives an option to farmers to receive individual needs-based information for only those services to which they have subscribed.
- The experts at the back end will have access to the farmers’ database while responding to their queries.
- In this manner, experts would be able to understand the problems raised by farmers or field problems in a better way (KYF – Know Your Farmer) and expeditiously provide appropriate solutions to the farmer in a personalized manner.
- Currently the IIDS platform has been deployed in North-Eastern states, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana which would be extended to all over the country with this MoU with ICAR.