Mobile van to educate farmers launched

Rythu Ratnam-208, a mobile van equipped with the latest technologies mainly to provide information on agriculture to farmers, was launched in Andhra Pradesh.

This is a first-of-its kind initiative in India, where the van would go to a farmer’s doorstep for effective knowledge dissemination and would facilitate linkage between farmers and the market, Srihari Kotela, managing director, eFresh Portal, said.

“After the success of 108 ambulance, we have taken this pioneering step. The van would be equipped with a projector, computer, Internet and GPS,” he added.

The main aim is to increase farmers’ income by enhancing productivity and quality of the produce, capacity building through training, improving health of farm labour and empowering women entrepreneurs in agriculture, he said.

 

Andhra Bank chairman and managing director R Ramachandran said, “Educating farmers using mobile van, computer and Internet is a welcome move as it will bring transparency and remove the middle man and intermediaries.”

A portal, eFresh.com, was also launched in Telugu. The portal would have information on categorisation of crops, crops technical, commercial, knowledge hub, trading platform, new technologies, and e-Learning modules for good agricultural practices.

Apart from Telugu and English, the portal is being developed in Hindi, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil, Gujarati and Bengali.