The biggest challenge to DC will be to make the relevant information affordable, easily accessible in user-friendly forms, and made available on a timely manner to millions of smallholder farmers who are so diverse and scattered over large areas. To enhance the use of digital technologies by smallholder farmers, we need to:
Organize the smallholder farmers into producer groups for each commodity where the digital technologies can be tailor-made for each group and disseminated efficiently.
Establish digital technologies service providers who will serve their clients the required digital information and technologies on a cost-recovery basis. If the information and technologies provided are robust enough to make a significant positive difference in farmers' income and livelihood, they will be willingly pay for the services.
Timely information is critical in focused and location-specific weather forecasting, early warning of impending natural disasters, possible invasion of pests and diseases based on local weather, and demand-supply balancing and price fluctuations in markets.
Digital technologies must help demand-supply management. Assessment of regional demand for various commodities and crop planning to meet the assessed demands will help farmers prevent excessive production that will lead to market gluts and declining prices. This is especially important for the perishable produce like the vegetables and fruits.
Cost-benefit analysis of each technology must be made available to farmers so that they can make an informed choice of technologies they wish to use in their farms.
Dr. Vethaiya BALASUBRAMANIAN