IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

The agricultural sector in Nepal is confronted with the major challenge of increasing production to feed a growing and increasingly prosperous population in a situation of decreasing availability of natural resources. Factors of particular concern are water shortages, declining soil fertility, effects of climate change, rapid decrease of fertile agricultural lands due to urbanization and dislike of the younger generation to involve themselves in agricultural activities. This has made the youths give priority to foreign employment rather that to the agricultural sector which is labour intensive in Nepal’s context. The farmers should be made aware of cash crop cultivation instead of traditional farming of food crops. They should be trained well to sharpen their skills so that agriculture productivity could be increased. The main barrier to achieve this result is unavailability of technical manpower in villages. The service of agriculture experts from the urban areas or district headquarter can be made available even in remote villages virtually at any time through the ICT Information and Communication Technology) Network. New approaches and technical innovations are required to cope with these challenges and to enhance the livelihoods of the farmers. The use of ICT would be a milestone to enhance food security and support rural livelihoods. Agricultural productivity could be increased qualitatively and quantitatively.

Almost all the village development committees of Nepal have the availability of one or the other company’s mobile phone network. The government/ community can take the help of these companies either for Network access or in using the tower of those companies to reach the villages by making an interconnected network of WI FI or WI Max technology. It is better and economic to build own IC Network using Wi-Fi, WI-Max or optical fiber network depending on the geography of the area. The power consumption in such an equipment is very low. Due to the access of towers, the cost of the ICT network to reach every village would be cheaper. This network can be used by the government/ the Community concerned for: e-governance; telemedicine/e-health; e-farming; tele-education/distance learning and so on.

The security of the network, operation and maintenance etc could be made through a 3-party negotiation— the government, local VDCs and mobile companies. After the installation, it could be handled and operated as community model like community forest concept in Nepal. The farmers may be benefited from the network through various ways including rapid SMS system, Intranet/ Internet connection between local servers/ agro offices for video conference, hundreds of farmers from dozens of villages can be trained at a time by the central office (say District Agriculture Office/ Center Agriculture offices), and farmers from one village can easily communicate with farmers of another village on their own, farmers can get the market price at their own village which increase in their bargaining power and decrease the price difference between the market and farm.

Increasing the efficiency, productivity and sustainability of small scale farms is where ICT can make a significant contribution. Farming involves risks and uncertainties, with farmers facing many threats from poor soil, drought, erosion and pests. Key improvements stem from information about pests and disease control, especially early warning systems, new varieties, new ways to optimize production and regulations for quality control. The soil type, irrigation method, cash crops cultivation, storage and drying technologies can be transfer to society easily and effectively.

Typically, price information is collected at the main regional markets and stored in a central database. The information is published on a website, accessible to farmers via information centers. To reach a wider audience, information is broadcast via rural radio, server computers, TV or mobile phones; published in ICT center thereby creating a ‘level playing field’ between producers and traders in a region. Communities and farmer organizations can be helped through the use of ICTs to strengthen their own capacities and better represent their constituencies when negotiating input and output prices, land claims, resource rights and infrastructure projects.

Use of mobile phones has seen an enormous increase in recent years, especially in rural areas of Nepal. Nevertheless, big differences still exist in broadband access between rural and urban areas, with rural community having very little percentage of broadband users. New wireless technologies such as MESH and WI-MAX, and new generation mobile phone networks, will provide high speed internet services at sharply reduced costs, thereby dramatically increasing internet coverage in rural areas.

It is essential that the use of ICT is mandatory in every field in this century to get the best results of any development project. Scientific farming is essential to increase agricultural productivity of the country. E-farming is well proven emerging technology to reach the destination.

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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sagar Mani Gnawli

Quelle/Source: The Himalayan Times, 13.12.2010

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