Advisory services on organic farming using ICT’s in Bangladesh

Summary

Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world with more than 160 million people with a very small territory of 147,570 square kilometers (BBS, 2011). To ensure food production for the huge population, the term ‘green revolution’ was appeared in 1960s with the concept of ‘grow more food’. For this, introduction of High Yielding Varieties (HYV), as well as chemical fertilizers, pesticides and ground water extraction were undertaken. As a result, food self sufficiency have achieved within a very short time. At the same time, soil fertility as well as soil health maintenance totally been ignored. The use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is increasing over the years in Bangladesh (Table 1). BARC (2001) showed that soil organic matter is decreasing in some agro-ecological zones of Bangladesh (Fig.1). Subsequently, the average organic matter content of top soils have gone down, from about 2% to 1% over the last 40 years (BARC, 2001). In these aspects, the term Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has come in the sight to the advisory services of farmers safeguarding the environment in a cost effective way. ICT means information and communication technology which is an umbrella that includes any communication device or application, encompassing: radio, television, cellular phones, computer and network hardware and software, satellite systems and so on. Over the past few years, there has been a remarkable progress in the use of ICT’s in Bangladesh agriculture, especially in the area of farmers’ access to agro-services delivery. Various projects have been developed that integrate ICTs into the dissemination of agricultural information to farmers.
This paper discusses few innovative technologies using ICTs to deliver information to farmers, focusing its analysis largely on mobile telephony, which has become more widespread recently as a means of disseminating agricultural information to farmers and offers various means of providing agricultural entrepreneurships.