Knowledge Sharing and Innovation (KSI) is partnering a project entitled Engaging Farmers, Enriching Knowledge :agropedia Phase II with Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. The project emphasizes on dissemination of the crop, language and location specific agricultural information among the farming communities while connecting them with Krishi Vigyan Kendra scientists via the internet and mobile telephony (http://agropedialabs.iitk.ac.in/kvk/). The project duration is from April, 2011 to March, 2012.
During the short span (less than 2 years) of first phase, agropedia with the consortium partners has developed several path breaking concepts and demonstrated their feasibility. Crop knowledge models of 9 crops, content management platform for storing and searching all about agriculture, Agropedia deployment options and social networking platforms were developed. agropedia Phase II is providing SMS (text and voice) services to the selected farmers of 79 districts where Krishi Vigyan Kendras are operational in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. This is followed by the timely alerts on emerging information and contingencies for advisories like flood, drought or outbreaks of insect-pests and diseases.
The partners in this project are Indian Institute of Technology - Kanpur, ICRISAT, Indian Institute of Management - Calcutta, UAS - Raichur, and ZPD-Zone 4. Workshops/trainings by the consortium partners have been conducted time to time to review the progress and to popularize the concept.
