I AM FARMER IN THIS BLOG SO I AM SHARING A NEW LIFE TO DIGITAL WORLD..
India has only 30 percent internet penetration, centered around its cities. Many villages don’t have reliable electricity. These limitations handicap the potential of technology to resolve the challenges farmers face in India, says Shrikant Barhate, a former consultant with the World Bank. There are also deeper economic challenges — such as high production costs and limited access to agricultural credit — that the current wave of technology startups isn’t addressing, he adds.
Still, those behind these farmer-oriented innovations, like Sandhu, have had some success in working around many of the challenges they’ve faced. After initially struggling to convince farmers to use technology, Sharma and his team started recording videos of those farmers who were relatively quick learners. They aired these videos on projectors in villages. “Word spread, and now, over 2,800 households have benefited from our initiative,” says Sharma. Kumar has ambitious plans to train 20,000 farmers in southern India so they can go back to their villages and serve as brand ambassadors for technology there. Several small farmers can pool their resources and invest in on-farm technology, suggests Mantha.
And converts to technology are growing. As farmer suicides pile up, turning housewives into widows and leaving children paranoid about whether their family will be next, Gopal Mahajan, a 48-year-old farmer from western India, has made a choice. “I use every mobile application, web portal and social media group I learn about,” he says. “Anything that’ll silence those frequent thoughts of killing myself.”