Government of Kerala, Kerala State IT Mission, the nodal Agency to Department of Electronics and IT in association with CISCO & Mindtree is equipping with a technology driven Agriculture project initiative, called Village Knowledge Center to empower the farmers in the state, improve agricultural productivity and business enablement opportunities for farmers, thereby achieve the goal of accelerating the rural economy.
The Information Technology Policy 2017 of Government of Kerala envisions transformation of Kerala as a Knowledge Powered Digital Society by 2020 through application of Digital Technologies in areas of Digital Citizenship, Digital Lifestyle and Digital commerce. A key objective of the policy is to improve lives of common people by leveraging the power of technology. With a vision to develop an inclusive society, Government has started “Smart Village” project to adopt Digital Technologies to improve livelihood, commerce and lifestyle in rural areas through judicious deployment of digital technologies. A key element of Smart Village project is the establishment of Village Knowledge Centers (VKCs). VKCs are conceptualized as institutions at the panchayats level which will act as nodal centers to bridge information asymmetry in the rural economy, providing thrust to sectors like agriculture, health, education etc. which are crucial in improving lives of people living in the area. A spectrum of digital technologies ranging from smart sensors to geospatial analytical solutions are being planned to be deployed under each VKC depending upon the focal theme of the VKCs. As a pilot project, a group of 15 panchayats in Kannur districts has been selected to roll out the VKC project. As agriculture and pisciculture being the key vocations in the chosen panchayats, these areas are taken as focus area for the VKC. VKCs are planned to be implemented with the support of leading technology companies in private sector that would provide technology consultancy, solution design and implementation support in deploying appropriate technology architecture to enhance productivity, market access and livelihood of people in villages. Accordingly M/s CISCO systems is associating with Government of Kerala under Cisco’s Country Development Accelerator program to pilot technology enablement of Village Knowledge Centers (VKC) in Kannur.
VKC initiative works with farmers, local self-government representatives, Agriculture officers and many other stakeholders to bring about a sea change in farming practice aided by technology. A pilot phase of this initiative is underway at two constituencies in Kannur district-Dharmadam &Taliparambu, with Dharmadom being Chief Minister's Constituency. A few agro/fisheries products like shrimps, paddy, honey etc. were chosen for the initial phase. This is a smart agriculture project where sensors are placed at various fields to measure different parameters like rain fall, humidity, temperature, pH value, etc. and data is transmitted to a centralized server. Using predictive analytics, farmers will be given information regarding the change in weather and other parameters which may affect produce. These information will be used by farmers to improve the produce.
As Agriculture being the focus sector of chose VKC in the initial phase of development, Cisco is helping in equipping the VKCs with technology insights, domain expert-based recommendations, sensors and weather-based forecasting etc. to improve productivity. The integration of I Got Crops (IGC) platform from Mindtree into VKC will provide crucial market-making and business enablement opportunities for farmers, thus acting as a strong complementary force to achieve the goal of accelerating the rural economy.