Back to Office Report Subject / Attend E-Agriculture Forum at E-India Conference, Meet

CABI South Asia

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Back to office Report Subject Attend e-Agriculture forum at Author Mahrukh Siraj, Gouhar Ayub e-India conference, Meet with CABI counterparts Project DR-60007 Date 28/07/08 – 02/08/08 Code The visit was undertaken to attend fourth the e-India conference 2008. It is a large international event which takes place every year. e-Agriculture was introduced last year. Mahrukh Siraj, Gouhar Ayub from CABI-South Asia Regional Office and Lalit Saini from CABI-SA India office attended the e-Agriculture forum of the conference.

At the eIndia 2008 approximately 125 exhibitors and sponsors exhibited their products. A large number of exhibitors were from digital and distance learning sector. The major categories were:  Interactive White boards  e-Enabled Interactive Classrooms  Virtual Classrooms located at different geographical locations and led by one instructor in the studio linked via VSATs.  Internet based solutions.  A very interesting vendor was Designmate (www.designmate.com), these are 3D multimedia [like the 3D movies with special glasses to view the content] educational content providers.

The e-Agriculture Conference focussed mainly on projects that have been implemented in the field or are being implemented. Presentations were made on Agrisnet, on ICAR history and its publications and research, on Agribusiness, on the USAID project for horticulture improvement in Tamil Nadu, Supply Chain management. Though there are a lot of projects for agricultural development, however the biggest challenge remains as how to make information available at the grassroots level and how to do that quickly. It was suggested that ICTs have the greatest potential of fulfilling this need. There has been a study by ICAR, which found out that farmers prefer to have a solution at the farm gate rather than physically go to the service providers.

There was great emphasis on re-visiting the curriculum of the Agriculture Universities and a burning need to introduce Agro-Informatics as subject and as a specialization. The need to introduce Supply Chain Management in the curriculum was also proposed.

The best technical best practices to implement e-Agriculture were defined as Interoperability of applications including multilingual content, creation of metadata & repository, Enterprise Application Integration including using Web 2.0, Standardized business processes, reliability and scalability.

A panel discussion took place on how e-Agriculture can work through PPP (Public private partnerships) in Asia. The biggest challenge was identified as how to merge the public development agenda of the public sector with the commercial agenda of the private sector. It was recommended that this should be addressed when developing any programmes involving PPP.

The concept of CoPs (Communities of Practice) was also discussed. CoPs were described as building Communities which are tied by some common practices (activities) as opposed to some 2 general. It was suggested that to keep a CoP together the incentives for various sets of people participating in the CoP should be looked at very carefully and should be kept ‘valid’ so as to sustain the CoP over a long period of time. e-CoPs such as e-Agriculture,

Another very interesting presentation was made by RMSI. RMSI is a geo-spatial information service provider to governments, multi-lateral funding agencies and private sector involved in agriculture, forestry, geology etc. Their services include crop mapping, water resource assessment for crops, crop yield estimation, crop health monitoring through geo-spatial maps and remote sensing. They have done work on pest management as well, however, it was pointed out that geo-spatial maps can give the ‘stress areas’ but cannot as yet pinpoint the source of stress.

The opportunity was also used to meet as many of the Agriculture sector stake holders as possible to see how CABI can develop mutually beneficial relationships with them. At the meetings CABI was represented by Mahrukh Siraj, Gouhar Ayub and Lalit Saini. Director HR-CABI, Neil Macintosh also participated in the meetings on 31st July, 2008.

Dr. T.P. Rajendran, ADG (PP), & Member Secretary, ICAR-CABI Workplan Committee, suggested, CABI should develop programmes using the SAARC mechanism at a regional level. Food Security is an issue that CABI should try to address at a regional level. Dr. Ram Chand of Agriculture Extension explained the Farm Science Centres (KVK) project. The plan is to establish atleast one KVK in each district of India. Dr. S.A. Patil, Director, IARI, New Delhi, explained the functions of IARI and expressed willingness to develop training projects with CABI. Dr. S.K. Sharma Dr. Ravi Khetarpal of National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) already support CABI in the development of Compendia. They would be happy to share knowledge on bio-diversity in the region. Sh. M. Moni DDG, NIC gave a full fledged presentation on NIC. Sh. M. Moni was of the view, CABI may be able to contribute to the AgRIS project. An EOI was also given to CABI to see what/how it can contribute to the project. (EOI attached). Dr Kuhu Chatterjee, Regional Manager, ACIAR, South Asia Australian High Commission suggested, CABI should also get in touch with the ACIAR representative in Pakistan to explore opportunities for working together. On the final day a visit was made to the National Agricultural Science Museum. The interesting aspect of the museum is that a lot of the exhibits are based on ICT applications. There are games for people whereby the soil type is to be matched with the crops etc. This is a very well developed and a very informative place.

PURPOSE & OBJECTIVES:

 To attend the e-Agriculture forum at the e-India 2008 conference.  Meet with different the stakeholders in India

BACKGROUND:

The fourth e-India conference and exhibition took place from July 29th -31st, 2008. This three day International event was a combination of an exhibition and conference. The event takes place annually. The aim of the event was to create a ‘platform for knowledge sharing in different domains of ICT for development and to facilitate a multi-stakeholder partnership as well as professional networking among governments, industry, academia and civil society organisations of different countries, including the host country- India. The objective is to bring together ICTD experts, practitioners, business leaders and stakeholders of the region onto one platform, through keynote addresses, paper presentations, thematic workshops, exhibition and in the process provide an excellent opportunity for participants to interact with a wide and diverse development community.’ The conference was delivered via seven domains; eGov, Digital learning, eHealth, mServe, Telecentre Forum, eAgriculture and Muncipal IT. The sessions for these were conducted simultaneously. The event managed to attract stakeholders from India and from other Asian countries. It was a good opportunity to network and see what is happening in India and in other Asian countries. 3

The Exhibition:

Over 125 organizations exhibited in the exhibition. The focus this year was mostly on digital and distance learning products. The digital learning industry has developed as a result of the integration of the voice, video and data, developments in the multimedia content, touch sensitive devices, affordable connectivity via high speed Internet and via satellite. These technologies can be used to transform the entire agriculture extension into a more responsive, interactive, up-to-date and visible system with a much greater possibility of reaching the masses. At display were;

Interactive White boards: Essentially this means all the content on the white board can be saved to the computer. The white board is a touch sensitive screen connected to the computer. The multi-media digital projector projects the application image on the screen and one only needs to touch the screen to control the application i.e. the finger effectively becomes a mouse. Incase the presenter wants to make input to the application e.g. edit an excel worksheet, the presenter can do so by using a digital pen and then save it. The saved worksheet will have all the new inputs, all this is done on the board and the presenter does not need move away from the board and use the keyboard. e-Enabled Interactive classrooms:

There were various versions of these. a) All participants i.e. the teacher and the students are in the classroom. i) These include the Interactive whiteboard. In addition to that the students may have hand held (cell phone looking) remote devices. Through these devices that students can answer various multiple choice questions and can also send text answers. The text answers usually have a limit on the number of characters.

ii) In another version the students may have a digital slate, whereby the teacher using his/her control can allow a student to make input to the interactive board display from his/her location

E.g. website: www.smarttech.com

b) Virtual Interactive classrooms: This is used for distance learning. The teacher is present at the studio and teaches students present in class rooms located at diverse geographic locations. This solution is interesting as this is a point-to-multipoint solution, i.e. classrooms at many locations can avail a single teaching session. The class is connected via a satellite (VSAT) link to the teacher. The students and the teacher are visible to each other. Each student has a digitally controlled device that he/she can use to interact with the teacher. The moment the digital control is used the camera within the class zooms to the student and his/her image is displayed on the screen while he/she asks a question. E.g. website: http://www.everonn.com

c) Internet based solutions: These are also distance learning solutions, using the low bandwidth. As a result these can be available to anyone who has access to Internet. In these solutions the focus is on innovative content targeting a particular sector, e.g. the Microsoft certification exams, class XII exams etc. In one of the initiatives the lectures and lecture notes of the best of the best 4

teachers/scientists would be made available and the students can view the original lectures say, from Einstein. Due to the low bandwidth these are not interactive solutions. e.g. www.Topchalks.com

Other than these set of exhibitors, various district governments had put up their stalls to showcase their e-governance initiatives. Another category was that of hardware and software solution providers. An interesting one was Designmate (www.designmate.com), these are 3D multimedia [like the 3D movies with special glasses to view the content] educational content providers. The complete list of exhibitors is available at: http://www.eindia.net.in/2008/exhibitors.asp

The Conference: Most of the presentations made were on projects that have been executed or are being executed in the field. Presentation on AgRISNet was given by Ms. Dimple Verma IS Officer Division of IT, NIC. Eighteen services have been identified for core delivery. NIC (National Informatics Centre) is the technical consultant for this project. She pointed out that, information is there and is being collected (e.g. a Collector sends information on 64 proformas), but, dissemination of the same to the people remains a problem. She stressed on the implementation issues, which include; low quality manpower, shortage of manpower, lack of connectivity, Hindi fonts problems, inability of the farmer to access the information and unsatisfactory electric power in rural India. She was of the view that ICTs may be taken to the grassroots level and private sector should be involved and encouraged to do that, however if the mission of empowering the farmer at the lower end of the scale is to be achieved a ‘social agenda’ has to be part of the implementation plan of even the private sector initiatives.

Dr. T P Trievedi Project Director for Agriculture Research Information System, ICAR, pointed out that a study was carried by ICAR which revealed that the farmers do not want to come to the service providers like laboratories, KVKs, Agriculture extension offices, but prefer to have a solution at the farm gate. ICTs are best positioned to serve this need.

Dr. Sapna A Narula while making a presentation on Agribusiness pointing out that there are lot of government projects and schemes for the promotion of agriculture, however on her field visits, she found there is a huge gap in the farmers’ awareness of these schemes. Most of the farmers do not have any idea of existence of these schemes. The various supply chain constraints mentioned were very similar to the constraints in Pakistan e.g. extremely large supply chain with a lot of intermediaries, lack of market information and intelligence at the grassroots level. She suggested that ICT has the potential to reach every nook and corner of India and provide timely and accurate information to all. Various government led ICT initiatives e.g. www.agmarknet.nic.in, state government models e.g. ASHA, e-Krishi, Kissan Kendra, private sector initiatives; e-Chaupal, I- Krishi and other initiatives like GRASSO and Dairy Information Kiosk were mentioned. She suggested using the Internet Kiosks at the villages as social networking place to gain maximum mileage out of them.

There was repeated emphasis from Sh. M. Moni DDG NIC-DARE on the need to re-visit the Agriculture Curriculum to include Informatics as a subject and also as a specialization at the Agricultural Universities. This is to ensure that the Agriculture graduates at minimum have an understanding of the ICTs and at a maximum may specialize in Agro-Informatics.

Dr. A.K Choubey while making a presentation of best practices in e-Agriculture, described the various portals which have been developed or are being developed National Informatics Centre; ARISNET, APHNET, FISHNET, DACNET,AgRISNET, AGMARKNET, VISTARNET, COOPNET. AGMARKNET, which provides market information from all mundees (wholesale markets) of India is a very stable product and the lessons learned from is development and implementation can be used in the development and implementation of other portals. He mentioned various technical best practices such as Interoperability of applications including multilingual content, creation of metadata & repository, Enterprise Application Integration including using Web 2.0, Standardized business processes, reliability and scalability. 5

A panel discussion took place on how e-Agriculture can work through PPP (Public private partnerships) in Asia, the session was moderated by Michael Riggs of FAO. The challenges were identified as; how to merge the development agenda of the public sector with the commercial agenda of the private sector, the imbalance in the prevalence of ICTs in public and private sector as compared to the private sector public sector has less investment. It was recommended that these should be addressed when developing any programmes involving PPP. It was pointed out that India has about 100 thousand farmers, ICTs provide the best way to reach these, however innovative content development is needed in addition to connectivity requirements to make the PPP work. More information on e-Agriculture can be obtained from www.e-agriculture.org

Another important concept that that was discussed was the value of CoPs & Networks. This was a panel discussion moderated by Shalini Kala of IDRC-SA. CoP is defined as a group of people who meet for a specific purpose (activity) for an extended period of time; it is different from a traditional ‘network’ as here people meet for a specific purpose (activity). An Agriculture CoP could be between local people, the local Agriculture University, NGOs working in the agriculture sector etc. Michael Riggs of FAO pointed out that the main challenge is to figure out the incentives for each set of people to remain in the CoP on a long term basis. FFS is an good example of a CoP. However it was noted that though CoPs are created, but as the incentives are not looked into carefully these do not generally sustain over a long period of time. e-Agriculture forum by FAO on the web was discussed as an example of a CoP. CoPs could be used for re-using of knowledge, social mobilization and advocacy using either the conventional communication methods or by using the new Web2 based tools. A few examples of CoP on the net were given as e-Agriculture, Solution Exchange (a UN initiative for development Practitioners in India) and Digital Green (of Microsoft). Digital Green is the one to watch as ‘The project is a participatory framework of Agriculture extension and seeks to disseminate locally relevant agricultural information, in conjunction with established extension services, to small and marginal farmers in India via mediated digital video that encourages grass-roots learning’ . The project has won the Stockholm Challenge Award. To find out more about digital green visit: http://research.microsoft.com/research/tem/dg/news.htm

The Supply Chain management and introduction of this in Agriculture Curriculum was discussed. Approximately 35% of the horticulture produce in India is wasted due to mismanagement of the supply chain. Mr. Alok Sinha of Food Corporation of India (FCI) briefed that FCI has over 1500 godowns in India and all these are connected via Internet, so they all have information on current data on prices quantities, he further presented the functions of FCI. T N Balamohan of the Tamil Nadu Agriculture University (TANU) explained, TANU under a USAID project for Horticulture Improvement, has been successful in not only giving the farmers various trainings (GAP, Food Safety, SCM etc.), but has been able to develop a farmer owned post-harvest complex for banana, farmer owned produce organization and has also established a directorate of agri-business development at TANU.

An interesting presentation was given by K S Siva Subramanian AVP Agriculture and Natural Resources RMSI. RMSI is a geo-spatial information service provider to governments, multi-lateral funding agencies and private sector involved in agriculture, forestry, geology etc. Their services include crop mapping, water resource assessment for crops, crop yield estimation, crop health monitoring through geo-spatial maps and remote sensing. They have done work in horticulture (orange and banana) sector in the state of Maharashter. They have also done work on pest management, however, it was pointed out that geo-spatial maps can give the ‘stress areas’ but cannot as yet pinpoint the source of stress. More details of their work are available at http://www.rmsi.com/industries/agriculture.asp

Meetings:

Dr. Ram Chand, ADG (Agri Extn.) July 29th, 2008 6

Dr. Ram Chand explained the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) program of the agriculture extension. KVKs are Farm Science Centres. The plan is to set up at least KVK in each district of India, in bigger districts there may be more than one KVK and in districts where there is no agriculture there may be no KVK at all. So far over 650 KVKs have been setup. These KVKs are funded by the government but may be run by government, State Agriculture Universities or NGOs. Each KVK has about 16 staff members. The community/NGO provides 50 acres of land for the KVK and the government provides the money for infrastructure and staff.

The primary role of KVK lies in facilitating the agro technology development, assessment, refinement and adoption through On-Farm testing, Front Line Demonstration and vocational training in crop production and allied enterprises. Each KVK may be staffed by a team of highly qualified(MS or PHD) technical staff members in various disciplines of Agriculture such a as Agronomy, Horticulture, Plant Protection, Agricultural Extension, Home Science, Agricultural Engineering and Animal Husbandry etc. The choice of disciplines corresponds with the needs of the district. The first milestone that has been achieved is the smooth establishment of the KVKs. A manual on how to set up a KVK has been developed and the ADG promised to share it with CABI.( Lalit Saini to follow it up with the Ext department). However the performance issues remain, with some KVKs performing quite well while others unable to provide the required outputs. Dr. Ram Chand was very enthusiastic about developing programs and working with CABI. e.g. website of a KVK: http://kvkdhule.freeservers.com/index.html

Dr. T.P. Rajendran ADG (PP), & Member Secretary, ICAR-CABI Workplan Committee. July 31st, 2008 The crux of this meeting was that CABI should come up with a ‘programme’ for India and work closely with ICAR to develop such a programme. He was critical of CABI not developing any serious long term plan/programme for India. He suggested that CABI should develop programmes using the SAARC mechanism at a regional level. Food Security is an issue that CABI should try to address at a regional level. There was a mention of a MoU being developed, between Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) and Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR).

Dr. S.A. Patil July 31st, 2008 Director, IARI, New Delhi Dr. H. Chandrasekharan Head, Unit of Simulation and Informatics, IARI, New Delhi

Dr. Patil heads the Indian Agriculture Research Institute. The institute in addition to being the premier agriculture institute of India also has the status of a degree awarding institute. The program is for post graduate students only. IARI has a total staff of about 400.

Dr. Chandrasekharan, heads the unit of simulation and informatics. The unit is developing applications on Agri Informatics. A quarterly newsletter AgribioInformatics is published by the Institute to increase awareness among the stake holders of the various ICT resources available and of the new ICT resources that are coming up. The newsletter is available at: www.iari.res.in and is downloadable freely.

These too were willing to collaborate with CABI in any training or research venture.

Dr. S.K. Sharma, July 31st, 2008 Director, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), 7

New Delhi Dr. Ravi Khetarpal, Head, Division of Plant Quarantine NBPGR, New Delhi

A very warm welcome was given to the CABI mission, the people at NBPGR turned out be big fans of the CABI Compendia. The functions and scope of the NBPGR was explained. They are willing to extend their cooperation in developing projects with CABI, interest was expressed in sharing knowledge about bio-diversity in the area, bio-control, bio-fertilizer and soil health. NBPGR already supports the development of CABI compendia.

Sh. M. Moni August 1st, 2008 DDG, NIC- DARE CGO Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi

A full fledged presentation was given by Sh M. Moni to the CABI mission. The meeting was attended by his entire team. The NIC is National Informatics Centre of the Department of Information technology, Government of India. The NIC has developed various web portals among these is the AgRIS (agriculture resource information system) e-Granthalaya a software for Library automation now available for free for government/school libraries in India, DACNET an e- governance project executed for Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (DAC) to facilitate Indian Agriculture-on-line (http://dacnet.nic.in/). DACNET consists of networking the directorates, regional directorates and field units for access to Internet and Intranet, training the employees, providing LAN connectivity within the directorates, developing web-based applications e.g. Integrated Pest management, locust warning and control, Pesticides quality control, pesticides registration, central AGMARKNET, weather watch monitoring system etc. Sh. Moni, stressed the need for developing the discipline of Agri-Informatics at the University level. This is to create graduates who have been trained in both the sectors i.e. computer science and Agriculture. The need for this in his opinion cannot be over emphasised as the rapid developments and the proliferation of the different ICTs make these ideal for quickly reaching the grassroots level. However, this is hampered at the moment by the lack of knowledge of the Agri-scientists on how much and what can be achieved via ICTs and also by the Information Technologists’ lack of knowledge of the Agri-Sector.

Though all these web portals have been created and are useful to the decision makers. However as all of these are in English, most of these cannot be used by farmers. Sh. Moni was of the view that given CABI’s vast experience at the grassroots level, CABI may be able to contribute to the AgRIS project. An EOI was also given to CABI to see what/how it can contribute to the project. (EOI attached), the deadline at this stage is not important as apparently nobody has responded to the EOI citing that it is difficult for one organization to do it all. However, the EOI gives a good handle on the type of services required.

Dr Kuhu Chatterjee August 1st, 2008 Regional Manager, ACIAR, South Asia Australian High Commission

This was a short meeting. Dr. Chatterjee briefed about how ACIAR supports the activities in the local countries. She briefed about the ASLP project through which ACIAR is supporting horticulture and dairy production in Pakistan. It was decided that CABI will also get in touch with the ACIAR representative in Pakistan to explore opportunities for working together.

National Agricultural Science Museum, August 2nd, 2008 New Delhi

Located within the same compound as the CABI office, this is a huge museum. The interesting aspect of the museum is that while some of the displays are model based, a lot of the exhibits are 8 based on ICT applications. There are games for people whereby the soil type is to be matched with the crops etc. This is a very well developed and a very informative place

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS FOR CABI: The most challenging aspect in the developing countries remains reaching the poor small hold farmer. The Indian Government is keen on providing support to the farmers and has shown its commitment by making money available to the relevant ministries/departments. All the stakeholders showed keenness and enthusiasm in working with CABI. a) Over the last few years the number of KVKs has increased phenomenally. However not all of these are running in an optimal manner. CABI could provide backstopping in developing mechanism for optimizing the KVK operations. b) Further work needs to be done with the extension department to explore how CABI can provide simple learning products to the KVKs for training the farmers. CABI should see how the knowledge contained in the CABI Compendia can be re-used to create simplified products that can be used at grassroots level. c) There was discussion on the need to develop Agriculture Polytechnics. CABI should investigate how it can support Enterprise development/skill development at the village level. d) Support the development of the new curriculum for Agriculture universities. PUBLICITY & MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES: None currently

DISTRIBUTION: BTOR Summary

ATTACHMENTS: a) EOI from NIC, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, India b) Contact details of important officials.