Source: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703846604575447420497483404-lMyQjAxMTAwMDIwNzEyNDcyWj.html
Which pesticide will protect my crops?
It's a question most farmers in insect-ridden rural India ask themselves or their neighbors. But it's also a question to which very few have the correct answer.
What's the best fertilizer? How do you get rid of bugs? India's farmers long had only their neighbors to turn to. A mobile platform by Tata Consultancy Services is changing that, providing personalized advice through low-end handsets.
That was the inspiration behind mKRISHI, a platform developed by Tata Consultancy Services to provide personalized advice to Indian farmers on low-end mobile phones. TCS, an Asian Innovation Awards finalist, spent two years studying farming patterns in rural India and developing methods to connect farmers to agricultural experts, with the belief that technology could jump-start some of India's seemingly ancient agricultural practices.
"It appears that there is a last-mile gap between farmers and agricultural experts," said Arun Pande, the head of TCS Innovation Labs and the leader behind mKRISHI. "In the absence of correct information and advice which is specific to him, the farmer relies on what other farmers do—or on his traditional wisdom."
In 2007, Mr. Pande traveled through different parts of rural India to meet farmers and understand their business. After listening to their concerns—Will it rain enough in my village this season? Will my crop catch my neighbor's crop disease? Where can I take out a loan?—he saw the opportunity to grow that business by providing personalized responses to such questions.
"If one analyzes the questions, one finds them to be quite specific to a farmer's immediate environment and context," Mr. Pande said. "Hence, the information or advice given should be personalized to his need."
MKRISHI, whose name combines "m" for "mobile" and "krishi," which refers to agriculture in many Indian languages, costs a farmer between $1 and $2 a month. TCS partners with wireless operators to allow farmers to download the platform on high-end phones, and TCS has set up "mini-mobile sites" that farmers can visit to have the platform installed on low-end phones.
The platform's technology not only allows farmers to submit questions to experts, but also provides environment-specific details that give the experts a kind of agricultural map of the issue at hand. For example, when a farmer enters his location on mKRISHI, agricultural sensors connect to geo-location services like GPS and Google Earth to deliver local weather, soil conditions, common pests and food-grain prices to the expert on the other end. Farmers can also attach photos if they have mobile cameras.
"The mobile phone overcomes the lack of power and wire-line communication infrastructure in rural areas, enabling farmers to get advice one-on-one from experts," Mr. Pande said.
The experts, who have at least two years of agricultural study or experience, access mKRISHI on the Web, where each query is automatically assigned an identification number and an "Open" status. Six experts—two in Punjab and four in Uttar Pradesh—currently work on mKRISHI, but Mr. Pande said only 5% to 10% of questions are complex enough to merit consultation with an expert.
"We plan to provide expert system tools to agriculture workers to improve quality of their advice, and we provide FAQ and best practices on the farmer's mobile phone," Mr. Pande said. "This reduces the number of routine queries coming to the expert for response.
"Once the number of farmers and number of queries increase, we plan to involve agricultural workers with three to five years of field experience," he added.
Kamaldeep Singh, an expert since July 2009 and a research fellow at Punjab Agricultural University, works on mKRISHI on a daily basis. He calls the platform a "constant collaboration" between farmers and experts, rather than a one-time or one-way service.
"Whenever a question arrives, I answer it within six hours," Mr. Singh said. "Every day, I receive voice messages from farmers through the Internet."
TCS launched mKRISHI in 2009 in the agricultural states of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, where it now serves about 500 farmers. But TCS believes at least 1,000 farmers benefit via the farmers' social networks.
"It is very much helpful if they use this practice collaboratively," said Mr. Singh. "If they have knowledge, they will go to pesticide sellers and tell them, 'That chemical we require; that one we do not require.'"
Still, it's still only the beginning for mKRISHI—a "limited commercial launch," Mr. Pande says. Eventually, TCS hopes to partner with other major IT companies "and generate thousands of micro enterprises in villages" serving 50,000 farmers. Besides improving the platform with new tools, TCS sees its responsibility as playing "the leadership role in creating a consortium of partners and facilitating village entrepreneurship," Mr. Pande said.
To that end, the 58-year-old entrepreneur hopes soon to take mKRISHI abroad. So far, TCS has been invited to the Philippines and Ghana to demonstrate the platform in local languages.
"Farmers should feel secure knowing that they can get in touch with an expert anytime, anywhere," Mr. Pande said.
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