'Green Phablet' for Small Farmers

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'Green Phablet' for Small Farmers

Icrisathas launched a customised low-cost combination phone and tablet computer called 'Green Phablet' for smallholder farmershelping them inweather forecast and other crop management inputs.

"ICRISAT has been at the forefront of using the latest technology to benefit smallholder farmers. The GreenPHABLET will allow information to be precisely targeted to individual smallholder farmers. This will help farmers purchase inputs at lower price, get a better price for their produce, and link them to markets, thus putting them on the path to prosperity," said Dr William Dar, ICRISAT's Director General, while launching the GreenPHABLET.

The GreenPHABLET powered by the GreenSIM is priced at US$ 299 and has been developed by the ICRISAT Center of Excellence in ICT Innovations for Agriculture in collaboration with NUNC Systems, a company based in Hyderabad, India.

Info-entrepreneurs/extension professionals equipped with a GreenPHABLET serve as intermediaries, collecting information on registered farmers' landholdings and cropping practices, and questioning the database to pull information on their behalf, supporting informed regular decision-making and monitoring.

"This device acts like a mobile village knowledge center/common service center, enabling farmers to benefit from contemporary information and communication technologies and expanding Internet connectivity in remote rural regions," says Dr. Dileepkumar Guntuku, Global Leader and Director, ICRISAT Center of Excellence in ICT Innovations for Agriculture. "It creates an ecosystem of services that will improve the quality and convenience of information dissemination and knowledge sharing among stakeholders," he added. Discussions are in progress for the device to be rolled out India-wide and to Africa.

"Real time information sharing between farmers and researchers enables farmers to improve crop productivity and researchers to collect accurate data in real time. This lays the road for future innovations in the field of agriculture," says Sandeep Dega, Senior Director, NUNC Systems.
The GreenSIM is a special SIM card that can be used with any mobile phone. Apart from regular phone services developing world smallholder farmers receive free messages about the weather and pest problems while sharing the most competitive agricultural input and crop prices. This has proven successful in pilot tests.

Source :The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics

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