ICT and Agricultural Marketing

Agriculture is the backbone of rural communities. Agricultural households accounted for approximately 57.8 percent of total estimated rural households in the country, according to the 70th NSS report. Agriculture requires successful technological application to increase individual productivity and employability. A number of agricultural revolutions have been underway to improve the agriculture industry. Farmers get a very low share of the production due to the long chain of middlemen. Realizing the lacunae in the existing system of agricultural marketing, the government of India has promptly launched the National Agriculture Market (e-NAM). Agricultural markets in the country have undergone various reform processes with the goal of improving market accessibility, transparency in market procedures, and providing farmers with remunerative prices. ICT is the newest revolution amongst the Ecological Revolution, the Evergreen Revolution, the Blue Revolution, the White Revolution, the Yellow Revolution, and the Bio-Technology revolution. Through the use of IT, the need for agro-inputs can be calculated and supply tracked accordingly, based on the annual crop schedule. This would allow him to obtain inputs quickly and at a lower cost. ICT enhanced farmers’ ability to control production and manage supply chains. ICT platforms assist in making better decisions regarding transportation and logistics, price and location, supply and demand. Applications of ICT in rural development could end the isolation of people living in poverty. ICT provides direct access for producers to international markets and productive resources. ICT are critical to information delivery in the agricultural value chain. Thus, the use of ICT innovations empowers farmers by facilitating timely access to localised and personalised information for greater control of their production and risks, and thus marketing their produce to identified market opportunities.