Internet Services for farmers: a Shadow

As per 2011 data, agriculture employed 45% of Indian workforce as compare to 80% in 1951 and it is estimated to fall further to below 35% by 2020 as people seeks employment in town and cities. Around 60% of Indian farmers own less than 1 hectare as we all know small-scale farming is less productive because there are fewer opportunities for economies of scale.

Middleman plays an important role in aggregating produce from small suppliers but who take a large share of value. In this long and complex agricultural supply chain farmers in India could get low % of the final price of their produce. India who still lacks infrastructure, minimal no. of cold storage to handle large volume both at city and rural level, poor logistics services ultimately leads to high losses of produce after harvest and in the end, it affects the product quality. For example, around 40% of India's fresh fruit and vegetables, worth $8.3 billion annually, perish before reaching to end consumers.

With around only 30% of Indian rural population having a bank account and only 8 % of these are able to take a loan. These figures are even low for women's of rural India. With limited access to bank branches and ATM's in rural areas, small landholder farmers need to travel to access loans, insurance and receive payments causing delays and leading to a barrier in productivity.

Mobile in India

India is the 2nd largest mobile network in the world with about 400 million subscribers in 2013 as per TRAI and rural India estimated to account for half of this mobile subscriber- around 35%. Mobile plays a key role in accessing Internet services and in rural India around 70% access Internet with their mobile. This rapid increase of internet services in rural areas certainly will offer a lot of opportunities for farmers to connect with market, to know the real time information regarding prices of different crops and in identifying the potential crops they should produce as per the demand of the market.For example- Reuters market light provides tailored agricultural information over mobile phones to the farming community.

e-Nam is about to complete 1 year in this April 2017 its purpose was to establish a common national market for agricultural commodities. This market would enable farmers to reach out to buyers across the country. When a farmer enters the mandi, he will be registered and assigned a commission agent. Then, the farmer will leave his produce with the quality control laboratory which will do assaying and fix the price for the commodity. The bid is then loaded on to the website and buyers from across the country get to see it. Interested buyers then make the payment for the lot they selected through NEFT to e-NAM which will, in turn, transfer it to the farmer after deducting a transaction fee.

The farmer gets the invoice from the commission agent and leaves the mandi and the buyer picks up the commodity from wherever it is by his own means. This sounds good but Farmers in Telangana staged a protest last Monday, demanding discontinuation of the electronic national agriculture market (e-NAM) platform and restoration of the previous platform provided by NCDEX e-Markets. It followed the failure of the software to accommodate the heavy volumes of the peak season arrivals, beginning with maize and soybeans.

Conclusion: 

Considering above all facts and figure and keeping in mind India's demography Internet services are still untouched in many rural parts of India and if there is internet access then the government should arrange on the timely basis some educational and training program on how to use these tools to their advantage. At a time where to access internet data, you have to spend a lot of money, national information center for farmers in villages of India is a bold and quite good decision by GoI. 

All things go hand in hand with better socio-economic status of Indian farmers Indian government should now focus on Pre-harvest management practices and should focus on building village level cold storage units for larger volume and they should also have a point of delivery i.e. Logistics services at every village level dedicates for farmers only then farmers can get the higher value for their produce.

References:

1. Connected Farming in India report by Vodafone.
2. The Hindu business line- article on " e-NAM- a long way to go".