Title
 Proceedings of National Workshop on IT-based Personalized Agricultural Extension System 
 (IT-PAES2005), 6 May 2005, Hyderabad, India. 

Editors
 P.Krishna Reddy, G.Shyamasundar Reddy, and B.V Ratnam (editors)

Location of the Worshop
  International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad
  Gachibowli, A.P, India.  

Workshop Summary

 The National Workshop on IT-based Personalized  Agricultural Extension Systems is organized 
 to share and discuss the results of one year research project executed at International Institute 
 of Information Technology, Hyderabad (India). This project was supported  by Department of Information 
 Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Govt. of India. This research 
 project is executed in association with Acharya N G Ranga Agricultural University, Rajendranagar and
 Center for Environmental Studies, Warangal.

 This workshop was organized to explain the results and experiences obtained during one year implementation. 
 It was in accordance with the suggestions by the project review and steering committee that the results 
 should be explained to a cross section of society like agricultural scientists, faculty, policy makers, 
 banking sector, people from industry, farming community and so on and gather their opinion to up-grade 
 the system. The interesting part of the conference is the interactive session of delegates with the 
 beneficiary farmers who had received advice from e-Sagu project.  The farmers had answered the queries 
 of the participants touching each and every aspect of project implementation and usefulness of the 
 advices to the them. The details are given in these proceedings.

 About 150 delegates had  participated in the workshop. This includes scientists from NCIPM, New Delhi; 
 Cotton Development Board, Mumbai; CICR, Nagpur; NIC, New Delhi; ICRISAT, Hyderabad; Acharya N G Ranga
 Agricultural University, Hyderabad, NPPTI, EEI, ARI, DRR, DOR, CRIDA, NAARM, MANAGE, NIRD, NRCS, 
 CRTRI, NSP, NRSA, JNTU, Hyderabd etc. Delegates from financial institutions like NABARD and SBI and 
 representatives from NGOs like Byrraju Foundation, Naandi Foundation, and Velugu Project etc are 
 participated.  Also scholars from different universities also attended the workshop. Prof.Raj Reddy, 
 an IT luminary from Carnegie Mellon University, USA has addressed the gathering from USA through 
 Internet using skype. Almost all of them have satisfied with the results of the project and recommended 
 to extend the project to other crops and areas. Each one of them believed that eSagu has a potential to 
 help the farmers. The feedback given by the participants is given in these proceedings.


Outcome

1. It is generally felt that the proposed system provides opportunity to provide personalized agricultural 
   expert advice to the farmers in a cost effective manner. 
2. Almost all the participants have convinced that delivering expert advice by getting the crop status 
   through photographs and other data is viable. It is also very effective and more useful to the farmers. 
3. Discussions with farmers made it clear that input savings and yield increments among the project area
   made the farmers confidant about the new technology.
4. Registered farmers participated from project villages felt that the technique has convinced them by 
   providing personalized advice every week. 

Recommendations

1. The system should be more interactive. The project should also make use the multimedia technologies 
   to disseminate the contents.
2. The database developed over a period of time is made available for all institutions especially credit 
   institutions; insurance companies and other input providers and output handlers.
3. The information like access to Internet and e-mail facility should be made available in the village also. 
4. It should be an integrated project for weather information, soil strengths, crop patterns, inputs, pest 
   control, pre and post harvest technologies and if possible to see and plan the needs of a farmer.
5. eSagu advises should be extended to all the crops and agricultural allied aspects viz., animal 
   husbandry, poultry etc for effective farming. 
6. Advices should be given in local language i.e. Telugu for easy understanding and adoption. 
7. More training need to be given on continuous basis to the farmers and the coordinators with increased 
   involvement of the scientists.
8. Farmers’ success stories may be published in leading news papers to bring the motivation and 
   awareness among farmers of other regions
9. Pre-season interactive meetings to be conducted in the villages involving the agricultural experts, 
   coordinators for providing comprehensive information on the package of practices of the selected crops.
10.Funds that are already available with the Agriculture department can be used to provide advice at 
   a low cost to the farmers using this system.