Role of ICT on Agriculture and Its Future Scope in Bangladesh

Abstract

Agriculture is the oldest profession in the world. Since the historic human civilization periods, it has gradually developed. Technologies have enriched this occupation with the pace of time. Modern agriculture nowadays is so much dependent on ICT. A thorough review of secondary data sources; i.e. overlook of literatures from web, online published articles, reports, news etc. on some selective districts of Bangladesh was made to study the current features of ICT, its exercise and future prospects in the context of agriculture information and communication. Findings revealed that the majority of the farming group and thereby involved extension workers (SAAO) have limited access, usage, knowledge and capacity on the use of ICT tools and media. Farmers mostly use AICCs (Agriculture Information and Communication Centre), non-smart cell phones, TV and radio for agricultural communication. Conversely, SAAOs (Sub Assistant Agriculture Officer) used mobile phones, demonstrations and consulted AEO (Agriculture Extension Officer) for information and communications. Their utilization level of ICT based service was found much lower. Solutions to address these problems were found to be IT-based trainings, easy access and availability of ICT tools and services at a convenient price. Being an agrarian country; there’s a huge opportunity for improvement of ICTs in the agricultural sectors. These include, dedicated bandwidth of internet, electricity, reducing internet data charges, establishment of a data center, agriculture database, encyclopedia, GIS, RS, GPS, radio-based technologies, online-based agricultural (seed, fertilizer, pesticide, irrigation, marketing linkage etc.) management systems, IoT, drone, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, machine learning, big data analytics etc. Incorporation of these high techs are now a burning issue for the future development of agriculture and sustain production in a rapid changing world.