Hello Everyone! On the discussion points raised by Manish and the suggestions made by Janaki and others, I would like to share the following thoughts: As per FAO document - Bridging the Rural Divide From and comments made on this forum, the need for a common and comprehensive Portal/Gateway for the agricultural community is emerging very strongly. The efforts needed to develop such a portal and ensure its sustainability, a PPP model is perhaps the best option. Discussed below is a broad outline of such a portal. ï‚° Scope and Objectives The key objectives of this portal should be: * Emerge as a "One Stop" portal to meet most of the knowledge sharing and information needs of the agricultural community. * It should be self sustainable. This can happen only if the coverage is wide and allows service providers the option for revenue generation * To provide multilingual capability and options for customization to suit regional/country specific needs * To offer features that goes beyond static content to assist farmers in decision making and e-commerce so that the portal is useful, popular and actively used. * Option for multichannel dissemination of information through mobile phones, TV and radio, so that people with no access to computers can benefit too. ï‚° Suggested Features * General Content Relevant content such as: - farming best practices, - macro level information on soil, regional climate and weather conditions, - information on local government policies, programs and schemes - directories of - agriculture expert communities, research institutions, manufacturers & distributors of agro inputs, agro marketing & trading agencies This content is generally static in nature, but needs to be kept current * Community Networking - A platform for information exchange between community members, government officials and stake holders. (Similar to the features of the FAO "e agriculture site" This portal will complement the FAO platform and is not expected to duplicate it). - Training and capacity building - Social Networking - blogs, wikis * Advisory Services - This feature would allow farmers to seek advice from a panel of experts on farming and cultivation based on local conditions, choice of crops, agro input management on standing crops, prophylactic control and GIS based advisory services * Decision Support - Farmers need information to make choices and decisions depending on weather and market conditions. This information is dynamic in nature and can be made available by linking information from multiple sources. - Crop production and cultivation planning (based on demand supply situations) - Irrigation scheduling and application of agro inputs based on weather forecasts - Market price information to decide on timing and location of sale * E-Commerce - The ability to perform commercial transactions will enhance the popularity of the portal considerably such as sale of agricultural produce and demand aggregation - Purchase of agro inputs - (option for reverse auctions ) - Financial, banking, insurance and taxation transactions ï‚° Next Steps Some of the points mentioned have already been discussed, but they have been mentioned again to maintain the sequence. * Set up a Forum or Working Group to manage this initiative. (Many initiatives in industry such as setting technology standards, liaison with regulatory bodies are managed this way). * Conduct a study with stakeholders and community members to validate the desired features of the portal. * Get stakeholders (government, research institutions, industry) to work on a collaborative framework, since some of the features of this portal would depend on data feeds form multiple sources to derive richer information and content. * Develop a "Proof of Concept' for the main features of the portal. * Obtain feedback and suggestions from the community on the PoC. * Review the feedback for further action. Cheers, Amit Dasgupta.

Friends, I am citing an example of a PPP model for small and medium business enterprises (SME's) for developing countries. Though this model has been designed for a different segment of people, I invite members of this forum to give their views on whether similar models can be adapted for the agriculture sector and suggest how this could be done. A brief write up on the SME Toolkit is given below. For more information please visit the web site at www.smetoolkit.org. IBM and the International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank, have launched a major initiative on a new business management platform, which will deliver interactive tools, online collaboration and educational content for small businesses in the developing world. The SME Toolkit is a free on-line program, which provides easy access to best practices and business management tools to small businesses in emerging markets using ICT. One of the key objectives of this Toolkit is to assist SMEs become more sustainable by enabling them to use highly developed information, tools, and training services usually available only to large companies. Originally launched by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in 2002, it is available in 22 emerging markets such as Vietnam, Philippines, India and Bangladesh. This platform works through partners, who are responsible for localizing, customizing and translating content to suit the needs of the respective regions. Cheers, Amit Dasgupta.

Dear Dr. Janaki Krishna, Your comments and views do reflect the ground realities and practical problems that exist. Though the constraints cited are valid, they may not be major impediments if e-agriculture models can deliver true value to farming communities. Mass popularity of television and mobile phones are classic examples, where people have opted for these services even where basic necessities were absent. Let me try and address the concerns raised by you. 1. Power and internet connectivity is an issue in some areas. However, since alternative power sources such as solar energy are available at affordable costs this is not a major constraint. The reach of Internet connectivity is rapidly increasing with the penetration of mobile telephony. Technology developments are underway, whereby mobile phones can be used to access internet content in voice format through Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems. This will be a boon to illiterate people and for those who cannot or do not have access to computers. 2. Capacity building. Point taken. E-learning combined with focussed awareness creation can help address this issue. 3.& 4. Data ownership and Maintenance. The source of much of the data and information are from public entities - government or research/academic institutions (since in this region, the government is a major stakeholder in many of these institutions). This data is generally available in the public domain free of cost. Ownership of the data may remain with the source organisation and the use of data can be licensed to selected partners. The key issues are: • how can this data can be converted to information in electronic from, which is useful and easily understood by the farmers • effective dissemination of this information to a larger section of the agriculture community • cost of providing this service. The ability of public entities to be wholly and directly involved in delivering this service successfully, is debatable. Hence, the need for private organisations to forge partnerships with public entities to deliver content to farmers. It is likely that public institutions would make the effort to convert the data and information into electronic form and maintain it. But the value addition to transform this information in a format acceptable and useful to the farming community, may have to be done by private oraganisations. Working models will need to be established on how this can be achieved through PPP. Worldwide, most internet information is available free of cost and this will apply for e-agriculture too. Some of information can be charged for and farmers would be willing to pay if they perceive value. The overall costs of providing this service can be recovered through advertisements and paid services. Other value added services such as internet usage, DTP services, e-commerce would be other ways to recover the cost to make this model sustainable. Regards, Amit Dasgupta.