Agricultural market information through technology

The importance of agriculture in India can be gauged from the fact that the livelihood of a majority of the population depends on it. With a large number of small and marginal holdings, farmer's income is crucial for the nation's fight against poverty. To aid the same, profitable agribusiness is the need of the hour which depends upon decision making in production and marketing. Agriculture market information service enables farmers to plan their production more in line with market demand, schedule their sowing at the most appropriate times and decide appropriate market to sell their produce at remunerative price. Farmers require market information to negotiate with traders and commission agents for better remunerative prices. Market information is equally important to that of production technology. Information technology helps in spreading the real time market information, so that farmer can decide on marketing of his produce. Thus, market information helps in reducing information asymmetry by bridging the knowledge gaps among the growers/cultivators by providing price and market arrivals information. This article intends to describe numerous sources to receive information related to agricultural activities in India. It also throws light to the dissemination of agri-marketing information in other parts of the world so that the best practices can be adopted by the Government of India. The maximum registered users of SMS were 1705600 of IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd followed by KSAMB & NIC, Karnataka (248353), Media Lab Asia (30585) and Agmarknet (10238). The number of voice SMS sent by IFFCO Kishan Sanchar Ltd to the users were about 5 crores. Out of which more than 2.5 crores were in Uttar Pradesh and 1.22 crores in Bihar. The main portal to provide the advisory to the farmers through SMS was IFFCO Kishan Sanchar Ltd and Agmarknet. Agmarknet portal covered maximum commodities (>300) and operational at maximum centres (3289) among various information portals. Most of the portals disseminate data on daily basis. Few portals such as NCDEX, MCX, Agriwatch and Commodity India provide price forecasting, real time data and average prices of agricultural commodities.