Govt launches mobile app for farmers to hire tractor, farm machineries

Farmers across the country can now hire tractor and other farm machineries through a multi-lingual mobile app called 'CHC-Farm Machinery' which was launched by Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Tuesday.

Tomar also launched another mobile app 'Krishi Kisan' to help farmers take benefit of field demonstration of new farm technologies, seed hubs and weather advisories.

"We are trying to empower small and marginal farmers. We thought of using technology like mobile apps to reach them. The way you book an Ola or Uber cab using their apps, we decided to have a similar app for hiring farm machineries," Tomar told reporters after the launch.

All custom service providers and farmers have been brought on a common platform. So far, 40,000 custom hiring centres have been registered on this mobile app for renting over 1,20,000 agricultural machineries and equipment available on it, he said.

Terming the app as a "revolutionary service", the minister said, farmers through the app can know which hiring centres are available near their farm field, see photo of machineries, negotiate price and place an order.

In the Krishi Kisan app, a senior agriculture ministry official said, the government has geo-tagged crop demo fields and seed hubs not only to track their performance but also help farmers to take benefits.

Farmers can login and get details of nearest crop demonstration fields, which the government does to showcase new technologies and visit them.

The official further said seed mini-kits are being distributed to farmers for multiplication and now that they are geo-tagged, the government can track whether mini-kits are being used.

Through this app, the government will also provide farm level weather advisory in four districts -- Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh), Rajkot (Gujarat) and Nanded (Maharasthra) -- on a pilot basis.

These two mobile apps are free of cost and can be downloaded from Google Playstore, the official added.