Farmer issues being recorded by tablets

With the help of tablet PCs, officials of Agriculture Department are recording problems being faced by farmers, West Bengal Agriculture Minister Purnendu Basu said today.
"We have given tablets to our officials to document the hardships faced by farmers. They are also recording their views with the help of these devices. In this way so far we have made records of about 12500 farmers," Basu told reporters on the sidelines of an ASSOCHAM event.
He said the entire data collected from these tablets is then sent to a central database and analysed by the department.
When asked about crop losses, Basu said in the last three years they have given around Rs 350 crore to farmers who suffered crop losses due to various reasons.

Agriculture Department Secretary R S Shukla said they have set up 145 automated weather stations which measures data related to rainfall, temperature and soil moisture every 30 minutes.
"We are now working on whether these stations can also help us in weather forecasting so that we don't have to depend on the weather department," he said at the agriculture summit.