Nutrient management decision support system for livelihood security of farmers

ABSTRACT

Submissions of demonstrations for DEV 2013

Poor Soil health is leading to reduction in farm yield to farmers due to nutrient mining and imbalanced application of fertilisers and growth promoters. Generalized approach and change in associated knowledge systems leads to nutrient application, while ignoring individual farm diversity, uniqueness and management history, hence lower crop yield. Site-specific nutrient management (SSNM) practices not only help in maintaining the soil productivity and hence better crop, the mobile phone based Soil+ service helps the farmers receive information about nutrient management at timed intervals through personal cell phones as per the crop cycle and variety, hence helping increased farm yield.

As part of building its services portfolio in agriculture ekgaon undertook a project "Nutrient Management Decision Support System for Livelihood Security of Farmers" in October 2009 with the aim of providing a reliable and customised last mile, site-specific information on managing soil nutrients to farmers individually in realtime. The service offered 'Soil+', is provided on mobile phone of the farmer through an automated system in local language in text and/or voice modes as per exercised choice. The system includes a centralized server running the application with standardized algorithm for each crop, based on nutrient removed from the soil by previous crop & targeted yield for the new crop, customised based on the farmers data collected earlier.

The Soil+ service is now part of a portfolio of services branded as 'OneFarm', the service helps the farmers receive information about nutrient management at timed intervals through personal cell phones as per the crop cycle and variety. The system includes a centralized server running a application (for system architecture please see the figure) with standardized algorithm for each crop, based on nutrient removed from the soil by previous crop & targeted yield for the crop to be cultivated, customised based on the farmers data collected earlier.

The process involved to access the service has been made simple, using interactive voice response to capture the uniqueness of each farm, based on that server provides the best possible unique nutrient management solution for that farm by processing the unique information received from that farm in realtime.

This system takes the advantage of the availability of cell phones in the village and among farmers for last mile delivery of information services. Farmer could also access a more detailed advisory through the website by visiting any community information centre also in local language. A set of call-menu are also available for "anytime" information access by farmer through IVRS, provided in a small handbook.

The project was implemented in Tamilnadu, India with farmers groups constituting 500 farmers (including 10 women farmers). The initial impacts after first crop cycle are

1. 80% farmers followed complete advisory, 15% farmers skipped 2-3 steps in eight step advisory process, 5% farmers did not follow the advisory. Various reasons were identified for not follow of the advisory, including change of crop by farmer, lack of seed germination, loss of mobile phone, not able to recharge phone battery, forgot the advisory etc.

2. Reduction in input cost by 20% in the first crop cycle, with 15% increase in productivity. By second crop cycle 30% reduction was observed with average productivity enhancement of 10%. Measuring usability of advisory is part of the automated system through out-bound automated calls. Impact measurement of advisory on farm is not done as part of the process due to considerable cost involved in such exercises. Quantitative studies would require time and funding to undertake ground based observation monitoring for asses impact of such ICTs intervention.

3. Greater awareness on soil nutrient management practices, benefits to soil health though not visible, but savings from inputs without loss in productivity have encouraged the farmers to continue using the service.

4. Healthy soil, but results need to be verified over 2-3 crop cycle & soil test. An ideal usecase would be a controlled test area using advisory and other not using across several seasons to observe change in soil health.

The service is ongoing and results are encouraging with farmers acceptance of the service being high. The branded service portfolio 'OneFarm' has been commercialised and is now available in Tamilnadu, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Ekgaon aims to grow the service to reach over 15 mn farmers in next five years for which it is seeking to raise investment.

Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Enterprise computing

    • Business process management

  • Operations research

    • Decision analysis

• Information systems

  • Information systems applications

    • Decision support systems