A month after signing an MoU with Amazon, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) plans to bring in other players like Flipkart and Jio into extension activities with the main objective to leveraging the technology for raising farmers’ income. Amazon has also been asked by ICAR to prepare a roadmap for their next plan at the earliest so that the it can be rolled out in Haryana and Maharashtra at the first stage.

“Once the multi-layer extension system starts at farmers’ fields, they will be more empowered with technology, knowledge which will help in the agriculture production,” U S Gautam, deputy director general (extension) of ICAR told business line. He said ICAR is discussing with Flipkart and Jio to find out how they can help farmers in extension activities.

He also said not only Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), but also private sector can come and join the various extension programmes of ICAR.

Asked how the private sector being roped in by ICAR is different from what many new age agritech companies are doing, Gautam said the initiative is to supplement what KVKs are doing already.

During the Foundation Day function last week, ICAR’s director general Himanshu Pathak had said that for the first time it has been decided to work jointly with private sector in research, education and extension for which detail guidelines will be ready in next two months.

Gautam said ICAR has a programme called Kisan Sarathi, which reaches out to 3 lakh farmers whereas the country has over 11 crore small and marginal farmers. “KVKs and Sarathi type programme cannot reach all the farmers on their own,” he said. On free of cost technology demonstration by KVKs, he said private sector has to realise that first objective is to raise the income so that farmers become in a position to pay any fee.

The ICAR has been considering various options to bridge the knowledge gap so that what has been done in the laboratories reaches the farmers in a format they can easily adopt, officials said. For instance, if Jio can provide data services to farmers, they can have access to view new technologies and their application on the field, the officials said.

Last month, ICAR and Amazon Kisan signed an MoU to combine strengths and create synergy between the two organisations for guiding the farmers on the scientific cultivation of different crops for optimum yield and income, according to an official statement.

Pilot project

After two years of pilot project in Pune, with the main support of two local KVKs, ICAR decided to roll it out at national level. Sources said that during the first stage of roll out in Haryana and Maharashtra, nine crop will be taken up in which Amazon will get all the produce tested for presence of any chemical residue before selling those on its platform.

While mostly vegetable crops will be taken up some field crops may also be selected among the nine, but all of those produce which will be procured from farmers will be free of chemical residue. Secondly, farmers will have freedom to sell at anywhere else if they get higher price from the contracted rate offered by Amazon, sources said.

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