Two Mobile Apps Launched for Farmers
Union Agriculture & Farmers Welfare
Minister, Sh Radha Mohan Singh launched two mobile apps for the farmers here
today. Mobile app ”Crop Insurance” will help the farmers not only to
find out complete details about insurance cover available in their area but
also to calculate the insurance premium for notified crops, coverage amount and
loan amount in case of a loaned farmer. Mobile apps “AgriMarket Mobile”
can be used by the farmers to get the market prices of crops in the mandi
within 50 km radius of the device and other mandis in the country.
Releasing the apps Sh Radha Mohan Singh
said that Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare is organising “Kishan
Jai Vigyan Week”to celebrate birth anniversary of Shri. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Ch.
Charan Singh, from 25th December. Launching of mobile apps is the
part of the week long celebrations. He said it has been constant endeavour of
the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare to make available all relevant
and timely information to the farmers and other stake holders so as to create a
conducive environment for raising farm productivity and income to global
levels. It is in this direction that an ambitious project known as National
e-Governance Plan in agriculture (NeGP-A) has been launched. Besides providing
hardware up to the block levels offices in all States/UTs, the project also
includes development of 12 clusters of services (with over 65 discrete
websites/applications).
The
Minister said that out of these 36 applications and web portals have already
been rolled out and are in use by different departments and other stakeholders
across Centre and States/UTs. Some of these are mKisan, Farmers Portal,
Insurance Portal, Nowcast, Plant Quarantine Information Systems, revamped
Agmarknet and Kisan Knowledge Management System etc. The project also includes
making these services available through multiple delivery channels like web
based, through Touch Screen Kiosks, SMS, USSD and mobiles. Internet
penetration in rural India is still abysmally low, however number of mobiles
with the farmers and in hinterlands is rising at a very fast pace.He said that
Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare has therefore decided to make all
its existing and future services available through mobile platforms. mKisan
portal of the ministry has been a resounding success in this regard. Today we
have approximately 2 crore farmers registered with us for receiving SMS
advisories which are being sent by officers and scientists across all
States/UTs, ICAR, IMD and Agriculture Universities.
The Minister also said that the
Government will launch new crop insurance scheme next month which would aim
speedy disposal of claims with very less premiums.
Features
of the mobile apps launched today are:-
Crop
Insurance Mobile app
Government of India spends huge amounts
in extending crop insurance to the farmers so as to provide them relief in case
of unforeseen eventualities. Crop insurance is extended by both public and
private insurance companies. States/UTs nominate insurance companies to extend
insurance cover for different crops in districts/blocks. There is also a
specific period during which farmers can avail this facility. Due to
administrative and technical reasons much of this information is not able to
reach to the farmers well in time to take advantage of these schemes. This Crop
Insurance mobile app can be used to find out complete details about cover
available but also to calculate the Insurance Premium for notified crops based
on area, coverage amount and loan amount in case of a loanee farmer. It can
also be used to get details of normal sum insured, extended sum insured,
premium details and subsidy information of any notified crop in any notified
area.
AgriMarket
Mobile App
Farmers sometimes have to suffer losses
due to distress sales in absence of correct market information. They can take
an informed decision based on information about the ongoing prices in markets
around them as to which market they should take their produce for selling. This
App has been developed with an aim to keep them abreast with crop prices around
them. AgriMarket Mobile App can be used to get the market price of crops
in the markets within 50 km of the device’s location. This app automatically
captures the location of person using mobile GPS and fetches the market prices
of crops in those markets which fall within the range of 50 km. There is
another option to get price of any market and any crop in case person does not
want to use GPS location.The prevailing prices are fetched from the Agmarknet
portal.
Both these apps have been developed in
house by IT Division of the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation &
Farmers Welfare and can be downloaded from Google Store or mKisan portal (http://mkisan.gov.in/Default.aspx).
There is a provision that if any State desire to convert these mobile
applications in their local language, they can easily do so by simply providing
the names of few keywords in their language. Then this application will be
prepared in that language very easily and uploaded on the play store. 
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