ICT initiative in agricutlure to strengthen extension

A week long training programme titled "master trainers training programme on ICT initiative in agriculture", began in the e-extension centre at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University here today.
The program is under the Mega National Agricultural Development Project-Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (NADP-RKVY) entitled "Invigorating Extension strengthen through ICT initiative", with a financial outlay of Rs 250 lakh for a period of three years from 2014 to 2017.
The training mainly focuses on farm crop management, Kisan SMS, video-conferencing and social media networkring for the technology retrieval and accesibility, a university release said.
To achieve this, educating master trainers on the new media and ICT tools will be done to impart technical knowhows to about 6,500 fellow extension officials spread across Tamil Nadu and catering to the information needs of 82 lakh farm families, the release said.

To further strengthen the delivery mechanism of extension officials, the expert trainers are given with 1,428 tablets, which will be provided for the incumbent trainers along with other new age electronic communication means like cloud computing, agritech portals, market related information and mobile telephone message for the instant accessibility to the farmers of Tamil Nadu, it said.
In a big way, as a ray of hope to reach the unreached, this electronic communication would be viable for the effective dissemination of technologies to the farmers, the university claimed.