Dr. Ashir Ahmed at Ekushey Television

December 30, 2014 – An interview on the e-Agriculture project of Global Communication Center (GCC) has been aired on December 28, 2013 on the program, “Ekushey Business” at one of the renowned private television channels of Bangladesh, Ekushe TV (ETV). Dr. Ashir Ahmed (Director, GCC & Associate Professor, Kyushu University, Japan) was invited in the program and he represented the e-Agriculture activities over the conversation. The Income Generation Project for Farmer (IGPF) is an initiative that is providing access to ICT based farming knowledge base to the remote farmers while connecting them to the agro experts and empowering them with direct market access.
Dr. Ashir Ahmed emphasized on more effective coordination in implementing institutional researches in social and industrial usage in Bangladesh as in other developed countries academic researchers work very closely with society and industries. He explained about the initiation of the project with the goal of turning the unutilized lands around the rural dwellings into sources of incomes for the small farmers while keeping up their organic way of farming. When he was asked about the relevance of ICT in the process, he elaborated how ICT is involved in every step. There are soil testing facilities in the system which reveals the attributes of the soil and suggests the farmer which crops are suitable to cultivate in the first hand. All the cultivation information of the farmer is updated on the web based database, from which the agro experts can monitor it. The diseases and insect attacks on the crops can be treated readily as the farmer keeps always connected with the agriculture technicians, where he is suggested about the cures using natural substances instead of chemical pesticides. All the tools required to connect the farmer with technology can now be kept in a single box and can be operated with little training. Therefore, a community of farmers can own a toolbox like that, if it is expensive to bear for a single farmer. The project aims to figure out whether this technology is affordable for the farmers to make it sustainable in the long run. The preservation process is also monitored to keep it free of preservatives.
In order to ensure affluent communication among farmers and experts, the system utilizes the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technology, along with having an ICT assistant in each project area. The farmers also get direct access to the markets as they can upload their product information on the e-commerce website from where it is also visible to the prospective customers. The customer can order the products right from the website which is instantly communicated with the farmer. He also mentions that there is a good extent of demand for these organic healthy vegetables in urban areas like Dhaka, but the acceptability of the products are still under study. Another area of concern is that what portion of the price is received by the farmers and whether that is enough for them to make sustainable profits; the projected prices people are willing to pay for such goods are also under study. While replying about the future prospects of the project, Dr. Ashir mentioned that any commercial firm can collaborate to take the program in a large scale and involve larger number of farmers in the future.
The interview at Ekushey TV can be watched at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-yMIT5pow4