Section-B | ICT Previous Year Solved Question Paper (Nov-2018) | ICT

Section-B

Q2. Write the key success factors for ICT application in agribusiness.
Answer:

Some of the success factors for ICT application in agribusiness are:

1. Helping Farmers Raise Their Incomes
2. Making Agricultural Marketing More Efficient
3. Lowering the Costs of Information
4. Reducing Transportation Costs
5. A Platform for Service Delivery and Innovation

Q3. Discuss the challenges related to mobile phones and agriculture livelihoods.
Answer:

• Illiteracy/ low level of literacy of farmers

• Digital illiteracy : Inability of farmers to use mobile phones

• Poverty

• Lack of technological infrastructure such as internet connectivity

• Cost of technology

• Non ownership of computers, tablets and other digital devices

• Not enough time to spend on technology

• Lack of training

• Lack of awareness of farmers

Q4. State the trends and issues for making ICTs Affordable in Rural Areas.
Answer:
Trends :

1. Helping Farmers Raise Their Incomes
2. Making Agricultural Marketing More Efficient
3. Lowering the Costs of Information
4. Reducing Transportation Costs
5. A Platform for Service Delivery and Innovation

Major challenges for making ICTs affordable are:

• Illiteracy/ low level of literacy of farmers

• Digital illiteracy : Inability of farmers to use ICT

• Poverty

• Lack of technological infrastructure such as internet connectivity

• Cost of technology

• Non ownership of computers, tablets and other digital devices

• Not enough time to spend on technology

• Lack of training

• Lack of awareness of farmers

• Do not understand the value of ICT

• Lack of satisfaction with use of ICTs

• Several farming related issues unaddressed by ICTs

Q5. How ICT have been able to prevent yield losses? Explain.
Answer:

• ICT can help to prevent and reduce losses in crops through well-planned investments and disaster warnings or time sensitive alerts.
•  Water management and disease or pest prevention are crucial to increased productivity.
• Advances in ICT—such as GPS, GIS, mediation software, mobile phones, and satellite imagery—have improved smallholders’ ability to adjust farm strategies and reduce risk. 
• At the same time, these advances allow governments and development partners to better monitor farm productivity, make more accurate projections, and plan better for the future.
• Water is a primary topic in this thematic note. Although water is scarce and is becoming more so due to climate change,many water resources in developing countries are simply not exploited. In fact, the vulnerability facing agriculturalists in most of Africa is not the result of more variable rainfall but of failure to access the water that is available. Only 2–3 percent of Africa’s water is used (Woodhouse 2009). Despite current efforts to tap water resources and adapt to climate change, competition for water for household and industrial use will steer water away from agriculture over the next few years in almost 60 percent of the world’s most vulnerable countries (Ruttan 2002). Weather data, along with improved irrigation management and system engineering, are more important than ever.
• This note also discusses disease and pest control. Pests and pathogens continually evolve, making it particularly difficult for small-scale farmers to increase productivity. Without inputs like pesticides and the knowledge to use them correctly, pests and diseases reduce global harvests by upward of 30 percent for maize, rice, and potatoes (Oerke 2006). ICT devices like mobile phones and radio frequency identification technology are making it easier for farmers to know which diseases or pests to watch for and how to handle them if they are found. Pest eradication takes national and collective efforts. With ICT, governments find it easier to reduce crop losses from flies or rodents and livestock losses from disease like bovine spongiform encephalopathy (less formally known as “mad-cow disease”).

Q6. Summarize the improvements of logistics through ICT in agriculture marketing.

Answer:

The issue of food wastage is central to India’s efforts in combating hunger and improving food security. While focus has been on improving production, reducing food supply chain losses remains a relatively uuaddressed problem till very recently.

It is hard to put a figure to how much food is lost and wasted in India today due to lack of adequate infrastructure, however, a 2011 report by a UN body, FAO, puts wastage in fruits and vegetables as high as 45% of produce (post-harvest to distribution) for developing Asian countries like India.

Major challenges :

Inefficient price signals: The government has been buying almost one-third of all rice and wheat produced in India through the PDS system, but in other kinds of grains, fruits and vegetables (both being highly perishable), the role of the government is limited. This leads to MSPs being ineffective as both price signals and as insulators from the perspective of the larger agricultural population. 

Limited reach of mandis: Also, this procurement system has failed to cover the entire country evenly (back of the envelope calculation suggests that on an average, a farmer needs to travel 12 kms to reach the nearest mandi and more than 50 kms in NE India) while according to the recommendations by National Farmers Commission, availability of markets should be within a 5 km radius. 

Too many intermediaries, information asymmetry: The above mentioned problems have led to formation of long marketing channels, with multiple intermediaries, adding to the woes of the producers of perishable agri goods. These intermediaries have led to a cost inflation of ~250% (over the cost of production) and have exacerbated the existing information asymmetries in agriculture, especially for non-MSP crops.  

Inadequate infrastructure for storage: The Planning Commission has recently estimated the gap between agri-warehousing supply and demand at 35 mn MT. Currently, public sector agencies like the FCI, Central Warehousing Corporations (CWC) and the various State Warehousing Corporations (SWC) have a storage capacity of 71 mn MT, while the private sector has close to 25 mn MT. To put the scarcity in perspective, food grain stocks held only by the government was 80 mn MT last year (peak) according to the FCI annual report. 

Skewed distribution of capacity: Skewed distribution of this capacity is another issue, with North India having access to 60% of the total storage infrastructure. The Planning Commission has recently estimated the gap between agri-warehousing supply and demand at 35 mn MT. 

Lack of cold storage infrastructure: India’s current cold storage capacity at 25 MT is barely sufficient for 10% of fruit and vegetables produced in the country. 

Lack of collateral management options: Collateral management refers to financing of agricultural goods stored at warehouses, and is estimated to be a ~Rs 3,500 cr opportunity by industry sources.

Improvements:

• Comprehensive agriculture logistics solutions: Private players like Star Agri that provide integrated post harvest management solutions have entered the space to fill these gaps. Apart from providing warehousing services, Star Agri, which recently raised funding from IDFC PE, provides collateral management and other value added services (quality testing, agri insurance, bulk procurement and rural retailing) to its clients. 
• Integrated cold chain solutions: ColdStar Logistics provides customized solutions for cold storage and refrigerated transportation across India for fresh and frozen commodities. Promoted by Tuscan Ventures, a logistics focused investment firm, their services include specialized refrigerated storage¸ warehousing¸ transportation¸ distribution and logistics. 
LEAF, which raised funding from Aspada recently, is another player which works with small holder vegetable farmers in South India. LEAF provides integrated cold chain logistics comprising post harvest transport, cold storage, processing, and supply through refri-trucks to the distribution center and retail store. Apart from this, LEAF is also involved in contract farming and agro processing, working on improving income realizations for small farmers through yield improvements, productivity increases, and consistent produce pricing.
• Alternate marketplaces: A young innovative company, eFarm, is providing a way to bypass the long chain of intermediaries by directly connecting buyers and sellers of agricultural produce and allied services, via a web and mobile based information exchange platform. This is a B2B (Business to business) model and aims to connect all stake holders in the supply chain: from farmers, to buyers, to suppliers of services like labor and transportation. The portal currently has over 5,000 kinds of produce listed..
• Reducing the information asymmetry: Riding on the high mobile penetration in rural India, Reuters Market Light and Fasal Intuit are working on the problem of information asymmetry for agricultural producers, by making personalized agricultural market information available to the farmers at minimal costs, through a mobile based service. Since its inception in 2009, Fasal claims to have helped close to a million people and created additional value for farmers of over Rs 135 crs. According to a 2009 study by ICRIER, RML has lead to an increase in incomes by 5-25% for users.  
TCS’ mKRISHI platform offers personalized advisory services to farmers, via mobile phones (SMS and IVR), enabling them to access important information on pesticides, fertilizers, soil and water conservation, and improving access to markets for them.
• Innovative ICT tools for supply chain management: Logistimo is a hosted web service for supply chain management, which can be accessed via basic mobile phones and web browsers, which makes it uniquely suitable for in rural markets. It is a configurable service which offers customers the ability to capture and share data in a simple, low-cost way, empowering them to make better logistics decisions.