An Exploratory Sudy of Mobile Multimedia Agricultural Advisory System: Challenges and Lessons from Tamil Nadu, India

• Published in: The Electronic journal of information systems in developing countries Vol. 56; no. 1; pp. 1 - 14
• Main Authors: Muthiah, Ganesan, Prashant, Suma, Umadikar, Jayalakshmi, Karthikeyan, Kavitha
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-04-2013
• Subjects: Agricultural advisory; Agricultural extension; Agricultural information; India; Information and communication technology; Mobile phone
• ISSN: 1681-4835; 1681-4835
• DOI: 10.1002/j.1681-4835.2013.tb00399.x

This paper describes the experiences gained in terms of challenges encountered and lessons learned in an exploratory initiative of mobile phone‐based multimedia agricultural advisory System (MAAS), which helps in providing timely agricultural expert advice to farmers on their mobile phone. When a farmer is calling, a call‐centre‐like interface containing personalized information of that farmer pops up at the expert's end. The expert views the farmer's dashboard and analyses the situation and query based advisory is provided to the farmer. This agricultural advisory system formed part of a research study under National Agricultural Innovation Projects (NAIP), New Delhi. The MAAS is developed by Indian Institute of Technology Madras's Rural Technology and Business Incubator and it was field tested with 1200 farmers in three districts of Tamil Nadu (Kancheepuram, Erode and Dharmapuri), India, during December 2010 to June 2012. The aim of this paper is to describe the experiences, highlighting a number of specific challenges and lessons associated with providing mobile based agricultural advisories to farmers in rural areas.