Smart Phone Application based ‘Agro Advisory Service’ for Farmers – An Innovation from Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper describes the process of design and implementation of an ICT-enabled agricultural advisory service to farmers in Bangladesh in areas where there is scarcity of public agriculture extension services. This system was developed and created based on a need assessment study under Agriculture Extension Project implemented in the south-western region of the country. The need assessment study was conducted with farmers, extension agents and relevant agricultural experts, and identified that an ‘infomediary’ enabled with a smartphone application that connects them to expert agriculturist’s advisory services can be an efficient and effective mechanism for providing solutions to farmers’ queries. This application, eventually named the Farmer Query System (FQS), is helping reduce the communications gap between an expert agriculturist and rural farmers, and augmenting the capacity of Agricultural Extension agents to provide services to a wider range of solutions with greater efficacy.