More than 115 crore SMS advisories have been sent to over 70 lakh farmers in the last one year by the SMS Portal for Farmers.

The SMS Portal has been conceived, designed and created inhouse by the Department of Agriculture & Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture. It was launched on 16 July 2013.

Possibly the biggest-ever initiative in m-Governance, this service has been used by 2660 experts and officers so far for giving information/services/advisories to farmers by SMS in their language, preference of agricultural practices and location. Over 78 thousand advisories have been issued till date.

The SMS Portal ranks number one in e-Taal portal of the Department of Electronics & Information Technology, which shows e-transactions happening through various government applications in the country.

Farmers can receive SMS messages on matters of their choice by registering through the Kisan Call Centre (ie by dialling the toll free number 1800-180-1551) or through the web (http://farmer.gov.in/Advs/WebRegistration/WebReg.aspx). This service can also be availed through the Common Service Centres and local agricultural offices.

Details about the SMS Portal

The service is available to officers and experts from the Government of India (Department of Agriculture & Cooperation; Indian Council for Agricultural Research, Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries and India Meteorological Department) and State Governments & its organisations down to the Block level, State Agriculture Universities, Krishi Vigyan Kendras and Agro Met Forecast Units (for urgent agricultural advisories related to weather).

The messages are being sent in 12 different languages based on easy phonetic typing.

78,618 advisories have so far been sent from different levels and 43.56 crore farmers (farmers receiving multiple messages are counted more than once) have received these messages.

Though there are about 40 crore mobile telephone connections in rural areas, internet penetration in the countryside is still abysmally low (in single digit percentage). So, mobile telephony is the most effective tool having pervasive outreach to nearly 8.93 crore farm families.

About 70 lakh farmers have already opted to receive advisories & services on their mobile phones. The farmers have been grouped based on the State, District, Block and the Crops/Activities selected by respective farmers.  Besides this, nearly 20 web based services across the country have already been integrated with the SMS Portal and many more are in the pipeline. Services already integrated to use the power of SMS include Buyer-Seller Interface, choice of machine & dealer, Kisan Call Centre, market prices, agro-met advisories, NeGP-A roll-out, farm-mechanisation, micro-irrigation, animal-husbandry, fertilizer testing, dealer licensing etc.

Messages sent to farmers are dynamically displayed on a dashboard available to public at www.farmer.gov.in. The information can be seen by way of self-explanatory graphs as well as in numbers. Anyone can also try the interface by logging in as Guest.

Data entry from remote locations and queries (without internet) by farmers by Pull SMS & USSD (Interactive Text Messaging) has also been technically operationalised.  The SMS Portal has unique features like database to sift farmers down to Block level & to select specific agricultural commodity/animal/bird/fish, rating/correction of messages by the supervisory officers, searchable database of previous advisories, status report of messages sent, drillable & graphical dashboard, query review interface with email piping etc.

Messages are sent based on technical literature prepared by the authorities, Government orders, websites and, most importantly, Farmers’ Portal (Beta Version) of which SMS Portal is a part. Farmers’ Portal is a one stop shop for farmers where a farmer can get information on range of topics including seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, credit, good practices, dealer network, availability of inputs, beneficiary list, agromet advisory etc.  The farmer can drill down to the Block level and get information relevant for his / her area and crop.

IVRS and Voice-based advisories are being rolled out.  Text to voice conversion (without internet) at the user end is also under advanced stage of development for semi-literate and illiterate users.

MP:SS:CP SMS Portal (18.7.2014)