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| Friday, 23 July 2004 |
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Agricultural Department takes new methods to rural farmer by Lionel Yodhasinghe The Cyber Extension Project, which was set up to educate traditional farmers on modern agricultural methods to increase rural farm produce, is now on operation throughout the country. Supporting the Government's major policies to develop the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, the Agricultural Department (AD) has developed this National Agricultural Information Network (Cyber Agricultural Extension) to take modern technology to the rural farmer. The pilot project is now functioning with the assistance of CARP and IRRI at 17 Govijana Kendra offices, Head of the Department's Audio Visual Centre (AVC), Peradeniya Dr.Rohan Wijekoon said. Farmers can bring their live samples to the Cyber Extension Unit (CEU) where extension officers scan them and send them to research centres through email. Large samples, which cannot be scanned due to field problems, the instructors would digitally photograph them to be sent for expert advice. Web conference facility has also been availed at these centres to enable farmers to have live chats with research and training officers and senior extension officers and solve their field problems. A software will be given to each Govijana kendraya to update the current database of the Department's website especially e marketing. CEU will be set up at all Agrarian Service Centres (Govijana Kendra) with links to agricultural research and training centers, extension offices and relevant private sector institutions under his project. At the initial stage a CDROM based information dissemination system has been set up as telephone facilities are not available at many rural Govijana kendras to provide the facility of the full network. AVC, the only institute which produces IMM CD-ROMs of this nature has completed necessary project CD-ROMs on rice, big onion, red onion, maize, chillies, potato, sweet potato, manioc, banana, papaw, Anthurium, mushroom, tomato and brinjal. "We hope to develop more CDs on other crops, Dr.Wijekoon said. These CDs consist of all the learning materials on agricultural technology pertaining to relevant crop through multimedia such as reading matters, illustrations, photographs, video clips, animations and sound clips to create an effective and interesting learning environment. Farmers and village level extension workers including agricultural instructors, Govi niyamaka and Samurdhi officers will be given an ideal opportunity to learn agriculture at the doorstep through this project. In addition, these CDROMs will consist of all the local research papers relevant to the crop. The CDs could be used for trainings where there are poor modern resource to conduct such trainings, Dr.Wijekoon said. A large number of research development which have been accumulated from the inception of the Department since 1912s are lying idling due to poor information management. Therefore, a thorough investigation is needed to collect such valuable material. This massive knowledge pool also can be used at Govijana Kendra with the necessary scanning and editing to suit local farming community, Dr.Wijekoon said. Therefore, the project proposes to establish an effective agricultural information management system through the latest interactive Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Furthermore, there is an urgent need to establish a central information seeking facility for technology and marketing information to enable agriculturists as well as farmers to keep constant, updated contact with the net worked information pool. |
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