In News: The Prime Minister launched the Kisan Suvidha mobile application for farmers to provide agricultural relevant basic information quickly.
About Kisan Suvidha
- Launched in July 2015, Kisaan Suvidha is India’s first mobile application to bring Agricultural Produce Marketing committee (APMC), farmers and agents on one platform/online.
- The app benefits the farmers, commodity merchants and APMCs.
- Farmers can see the live auction of any commodity & APMC, price variations- maximum, minimum and average price of any commodity for any day/ month/ year.
- They no longer have to be physically present at APMC till the auction and weight measurement is done, through SMS facility provided to the app users, farmers receive auction price and total amount to collect from the agents.
- The agent can track his activity like commodities sold and bought by him, minimum, maximum & average price of all commodities.
- The agents can easily see the details of Gate Pass, auctions, cess collection. The APMC agent can extract information about goods damages, total village wise commodity and revenue generated.
- On the same app, commodity merchants can analyse the ups and downs of all the APMC in the state, get information of total cess paid by him.
- Government bodies can view the total stock of any commodity at an APMC and review village/ taluk/ district wise production.
Key Features Kisan Suvidha
- The app has a simple interface and the information will be available in Hindi and English.
- It will provide information on five critical parameters:
- Weather,
- Market price,
- Input dealers,
- Plant protection
- Expert advisories.
- To begin with, a farmer has to register the mobile number, choose a language and also must enter details of the state, district and block or sub-district.
- Weather section: It will show details of humidity, temperature, wind and rainfall for the current day and the forecast for the next five days.
- Additionally, a farmer will be also provided with extreme weather alerts like hail storms or unseasonal rains.
- Market price section: It will show the latest price of all crops traded in a registered agriculture market or mandi of the particular district.
- Plant protection section: It will give pest, weed and disease-related information as well as management practices for each stage of crop development from nursery to harvesting.
- Agro advisory section: It will show messages for farmers from district agriculture officials and state universities in their local language.
Kisan call centre: The app also directly connects the farmer with the Kisan call centre where technical graduates answer their queries.
Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC)
- It is a marketing committee which operates under the State Governments in India.
- The APMC was introduced to safeguard the farmers from exploitation by creditors and other intermediaries.
- The committee also ensures that the farm to retail price does not reach unreasonably elevated levels and timely payments are made to the farmers via the auctions in the APMC markets.
- Before the introduction of the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, the farmers can only sell their agricultural produce at the market yards of APMC.
Source: PIB
