The Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) has launched digitalised e-agriculture service, aimed at providing necessary agriculture information and technology support to some 30 million (3 crore) farmers across the country.
The DAE and the Access to Information (a2i) programme of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) jointly have developed the 'Krishi Batayan, a digitalised agriculture portal, and 'Krishak Bandhu Phone Seba (Farmers-friendly phone service).
All the farmers across the country will get all kinds of information and technology support from the Krishi Batayan and the Krishak Bandhu phone seba services, said Md Azam Uddin, programmer of ICT management wing of the DAE.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the digital platform-Krishi Batayan and Krishak Bandhu Phone Seba-through the video conference at Gano Bhaban last month with a view to extending the digitalised agriculture service at the farmers doorsteps.
Krishi Batayan or agriculture portal, developed with an extension dashboard along with sixteen different modules and linked up with researchers, extension workers and academicians, will play a vital role in strengthening the relation among research-extension and field level as per the seventh-five year plan (2016-2020), he added.
The portal has included all the agriculture information of the respective upazila which will help people develop their conception on the agriculture of a particular area.
Even all the stakeholders, including farmers, dealers and the input suppliers, will get their necessary information on supply, price and place of its availability from the module.
The portal has also a virtual platform which contains overall information on 768 varieties of 120 crops and 1,000 crop diseases. The newspaper module in the portal will help to connect the farmers with the news on national and regional agriculture.
On the other hand, the mobile phone based-Krishak Bandhu Phone Seba has been developed to make a relationship between the farmers and the extension workers. Any farmers can ask his query after make a dial on 3331 from his mobile phone, said Krishibid Dr M Nurul Islam, Director of the Agriculture Information Service (AIS).
The national portal contains a farmer corner and any farmer across the country can write his opinion in the corner about his respective area problems, he added, reports BSS
