Erode Marketing Committee has initiated farmers in the district to derive benefit from Kisan Suvidha, an omnibus mobile application for farmers launched earlier this year by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to provide basic agricultural information quickly on subjects such as market prices, seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, weather and agriculture machinery.
Erode Marketing Committee secretary L. Kolandaivelu advised farmers to download the application from Google Playstore to access the information. The application with a simple interface currently provides information in Hindi and English, and will in due course disseminate information in Tamil as well, Mr. Kolandaivelu said.
The application will provide information on five critical parameters: weather, market price, input dealers, plant protection and expert advisories. Interested farmers are required to register their mobile number, choose a language and also must enter details of the state, district and block or sub-district.
The Weather section will contain details of humidity, temperature, wind and rainfall for the current day and the forecast for the next five days. Farmers will also be provided with extreme weather alerts like hailstorms or unseasonal rains.
The Market Price section displays latest price of all crops traded in a registered agriculture market or mandi of the particular district, and the Plant protection section provides information related to pest, weed and disease-related information as well as management practices for each stage of crop development from nursery to harvesting. The Agro Advisory section will channel messages for farmers from district agriculture officials and universities in local language.
Through the Kisan call centre, the app also directly connects the farmer with technical graduates answer their queries.
