mKisan

National Farmers’ Portal

In the era of digitization, mobile telephony has been proved as the most potent and omnipresent tool of agricultural extension. To provide information on various projects, schemes and programmes run by Central and State Government to the farmers spread every nook and corner of the country, a centralised knowledge base was first created purely from the farmers’ perspective and was termed as Farmers’ Portal (www.farmer.gov.in). After that, considering the popularity of the portal, a new third level domain was created for all mobile based services for farmers on a Unified Portal– mKisan Portal (www.mkisan.gov.in). Unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), interactive voice response system (IVRS) and pull SMS were the value added services which enabled farmers and other stakeholders not only to receive broadcast messages but also to get web based services on their mobile without having internet. Semi-literate and illiterate farmers had also been targeted to be reached through voice messages. Data of National mKisan Portal revealed that since 25.05.2013, more than 2048 crore SMSs comprising of 4 lakh advisories had been sent to around 3.07 crore farmers throughout the length and breadth of the country. The portal can be accessed at www.mkisan.gov.in. All the KVKs of this Zone had been registered under ADMIN ICAR-ATARI Kolkata. Since last few years, KVKs are sending different information related to agriculture and allied sectors to the farmers either in English or in their local languages using SMS services. The detail information on crops, seeds, pesticides, farmers’ insurance, farm machineries, market price of agricultural produce, package of practices, various extension activities etc. are available for farmers. They can also download different schemes, farm friendly hand book and many other things. During 2017-18, KVKs of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Odisha and West Bengal sent 4, 1075 and 618 advisory, respectively. It benefitted about 4.43 crore farmers in the Zone.

Table: State-wise distribution of SMS advisories and number of beneficiaries during 2017-18