Online Farming

Online Farming:

Agropedia, an open source encyclopaedia for agriculture, has been launched by the government

http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/

It disseminates information to farmers and enables sharing of knowledge amongst them
The site is a follow-up to a-Aqua, an online agriculture Q&A forum

Is India's next farming revolution taking roots online? Agropedia, an agricultural encyclopaedia, a cross between Krishi Darshan and Wikipedia, was launched last month by the government to make scientific information available to farmers and at the same time collate and preserve traditional farming knowledge. This initiative is based on the 'wiki' concept that allows anyone to access or modify content on a website.

Led by IIT Kanpur and the Hyderabad-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the "one-stop" information hub has several partners, from the G.B. Pant Agricultural University in Uttarakhand, to the University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad, Maharashtra. The Rs 1.3 crore venture is part of a larger knowledge dissemination project worth Rs 8.4 crore and is being supported by the National Agricultural Innovation Project.

"We found just around 3,000 entries related to agriculture on Wikipedia. It is therefore an attempt to bridge this knowledge disparity on the web," says V. Balaji of ICRISAT. In a few weeks, Agropedia has already drawn visitors from over 40 countries. Agropedia has two sections: Gyan Dhara and Jan Dhara. The former includes moderated information from agricultural scientists and researchers and the latter has content generated by the interested professional/layperson. While now it is restricted to nine crops, including rice and wheat, Agropedia will include others later.

In its current form, where all of its content is in English, the encyclopedia is mainly aimed at the field workers who interact with farmers. "In about six months' time we hope to finalise the content fed in by scientists and researchers. We will then begin the task of uploading information in Hindi and other regional languages to ensure wider benefits," says Prof T.V. Prabhakar of IIT Kanpur.

The encyclopaedia is unique because unlike Wikipedia and popular search engines which use syntactic models for searches, Agropedia will use a semantic model. This means the encyclopaedia will match not just the words keyed in. For example, a search on Google for 'rice' will also throw up matches for Condoleezza Rice. But a semantic search zeroes in on the 'sense' intended. Therefore, a query with 'alphonso' and 'pest' will deliver documents with those words and also material about how to manage pests in mangoes.

More significantly, Agropedia hopes to grow to become a repository of information related to traditional farming. These may be generated in English, Hindi or other languages by its public users—many of them farmers—and freely shared. These practices include simple tips such as smearing cattle with turmeric paste to prevent them from being bitten by mosquitoes. "It's typical folk wisdom, very effective and very right. If you were to go to a research lab for a response to that problem, they would probably urge you to spray some chemical on the cow," says Prabhakar.

Such a model, however, raises concerns about biopiracy and copyrighting of traditional knowledge that may come in from farmers. "There is an immense thrust in the government these days on gathering information about folk knowledge and practices through people's biodiversity registers.This knowledge then unfortunately becomes the property of the government, not the nation, and because of this the original owners of knowledge do not benefit from its exploitation," says P. V. Sateesh of Deccan Development Society, a grassroots organisation. The encyclopaedia must ensure it doesn't contribute further to that trend.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20090223&fname=Farmers+(F)&sid=1