An intelligent agri-information dissemination framework: An e-Government

Abstract

Farmers, specifically of developing countries, face problems like soil attrition, yield losses, reduced market prices, increased pesticides costs and economic barriers. These problems prevent these cultivators from adopting modern farming strategies and hence render them vulnerable. However, these farmers can use pre-hand information to make informed decisions with respect to all agricultural operation. We propose an agriculture information system (Agr-IS) based on ICTs and e-government infrastructure for the benefit of rural farmers by educating them on different aspects of sustainable agriculture (SA). The core functionality of proposed information system is supported by an intelligent Agro-DSS which receives information for various governmental agencies and dispatches the relevant information to the lower end farmers. Agro-DSS works in collaboration with Agr-IS, various other open source software (like Asterisk server), and SOA-based e-government infrastructure for the dissemination of up-to-date agricultural information in a readily accessible and easily understood form, to farmers, agricultural researchers, and advisers. In order to improve the governmental involvement in agriculture to leverage agricultural reforms, the capabilities of SOA are exploited using SOA-based e-government infrastructure. It will help significantly in bridging the gap between rural farmers and governmental agencies. With a diverse biophysical and socio-economic data and knowledge, the presented infrastructure will help reduce the uncertainty and improve decision making process by providing access to data, procedures and analytical capability.