Rajahmundry: In a bid to enhance productivity and revenue in primary sector comprising agriculture, horticulture, fisheries and others, the West Godavari administration has come up with a software application to closely monitor the production practices being adopted by the farmers on a regular basis and advise them properly and promptly.
At the initiative of collector K. Bhaskar, National Informatics Centre has developed a software application. Multi-purpose extension officers or field officers of concerned departments armed with tabs which are installed with the software application visit the fields as per schedule.
In case of agriculture, they will check the nature of soil and the suitability of the variety of crop to be raised and current usage pattern of fertilisers and pesticides and if there is any need for feeding of micro-nutrients to the soil and other details.
As the details of land, its survey number, location, owner, extent of land, variety of crop being raised, farm loan availed earlier and other requisite details are already fed in the software application, the field level officers upload the data collected from the field online and it will be availed by the senior officials of the concerned department and they will advise the field officers who in turn do so with farmers.
Authorities say that this exercise will deliver a very prompt result. For instance, in case the farmer has opted for raising a wrong crop at a wrong time or using excessive dosage of fertilisers and pesticides or even the soil is starving for micro-nutrients or any other malpractice being adopted in cultivation of crop, the senior officers will identify such lapse and issue instructions for a change and the field officers will persuade the farmers to do so and the crop is saved and its production capacity gets enhanced.
Similarly, in case of pisciculture or shrimp culture, the field officers will visit tanks and check the quality of water, usage of feed and growth of fish or shrimp and other details on a regular basis and they will upload their observations in the form of a data online and the concerned officials will respond for action.
This exercise will keep a check on whether the field staff are visiting the area they are assigned to and doing their job properly by giving feedback on observations to seniors and the latter in turn are attending to feedback by suggesting requisite measures to enhance production.
As the field staff are equipped with Tabs, their movement will be tracked through GPS and the issue of skipping their duty or to fool the officers by making false claims of field visit and submitting routine observations will not arise.
West Godavari additional joint collector Md. Hashim Shariff said, “The software application is loaded with the data of farmers and other details. The moment the field officer presses survey number of the field he or she visited, all details will be displayed. Accordingly, the observations will be uploaded online for scrutiny and whole exercise is to benefit every farmer to help improve production and earn more revenue.”
