Agriculture Resource Information System:

A step towards e-Agriculture in Haryana

Introduction:

The Agricultural Resources Information System (AgRIS) is the Central Sector

Scheme for Strengthening/Promoting Agricultural Information System in the
Department of Agriculture & Cooperation (DAC), Ministry of Agriculture,
Government of India. AgRIS is “A Needed Domestic Strategy for Sustainable
Agricultural Production and Sustainable Rural Livelihoods in India”. It is a e-
Government Programme for fostering agricultural growth, poverty reduction and
sustainable resource use in India at grassroots level and also “A Step towards
establishing a location-specific e-Government model for the Poor”. The
implementation of component AgRIS will facilitate development of typology
specific agriculture development plan in the country. This Project is being
executed by Agricultural Informatics Division of National Informatics Centre.
Agricultural Resources Information System (AgRIS) in the District of ROHTAK
(Dairy Typology), Haryana, Sponsored by Department of Agriculture &
Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, and being
implemented in Collaboration with District Administration, Rohtak (Haryana).
Agricultural resources constitute Land and Soil, Water, Irrigation, Animal,
Fisheries, Forestry, Plant, Crops and Cropping Systems, Climate and
Environment and other resources including socio-economic conditions that
contribute to development of agriculture and allied sector. AgRIS is “A Needed
Domestic Strategy for Sustainable Agricultural Production and Sustainable Rural
Livelihoods in India”. The implementation of AgRIS will facilitate development
of typology specific agricultural development plan in the country. In pursuance to
above, National Informatics Centre (NIC) has organized several Consultations
with Stakeholders (State Agriculture Department, District Administration, State
Agricultural University and other Institutions) through meetings and workshops
in CCS Haryana Agriculture University Hissar and District Secretariat Rohtak.
Proposals are invited from Government Organizations, NGOs/ Voluntary
Organizations, Individual Companies preferably from experienced Agriculture
Management Organizations of repute, having experience in the integration of
ICTs into structure and function of rural economy, for submitting an Expression
of Interest (EOI) to provide comprehensive services for setting up Agricultural
Resources Information System (AgRIS) for the district of Rohtak, Haryana.
Expression of Interest in the form of Project Proposal giving a detailed solution
framework.

1
Objective: 

The major objectives of AgRIS will include among others: 

 Development of Decision Support Systems (DSS) on Production Practices and

Systems”. The DSS proposed under AgRIS will facilitate farmers in adopting
appropriate agricultural production practices.
 Creation of Metadata to become the Country’s initiative of National Spatial Data
Infrastructure (NSDI) on Agriculture.
 Preparation of Guidelines on standardized methodology/best practices to be used for
building Agricultural Resource Information System in similar districts of the
Country.

Need of ICT:

Use ICT for establishing knowledge of natural resource base / database with village as a
unit. Then decide, which crop which variety which animal, how many? Now the theory
of standard design fit all sizes is not required. This Agriculture Resource database will be
guiding principle for choice of a cropping pattern.

Haryana : Important Statistics:

 Area (Sq. Km.) = 44212 (1.37% of India)

 Population = 225 lacs (2% of India)
 Food Grains Production = 7.08% of India
 Villages Electrified = 100%
 Drinking Water Supply = 100%
 Villages with Metal Road = 100%
 State’s GSDP = Rs. 94970 Crores
 State’s Per Capitta Income = Rs. 29963 (Highest)
Produces - 50% of Passenger Cars
- 50% of Motorcycles
- 20% of Tractors
- 25% of Sanitary ware
- 25% of bicycles
- 33% of total export of Scientific instruments.

Haryana: Agriculture Statistics:

2
NICHRSC Location = Northwest part of India
Climate = Arid to semi Arid
Average Rainfall = 455 mm
Cultivable area = 3.8 m ha, (86 %)
Net cropped Area = 3.62 m ha, (96.2 %)
Cropping Intensity = 177%
Assured Irrigation Area = 5.2 m ha
Food grain production = 11.5+ m tons
Milk production = 5.13+ m tons
Population dependent on agriculture = 65%
Agriculture Contribution to State Income = 26%
Ranks in Country in export of basmati rice = 1

Role of ICT:

 Use ICT for knowledge of natural resource base / database with village as a unit.
 Then decide which crop? Which variety? Which animal? How many?
 Now the theory of standard design fit all sizes is not required.
 This Agriculture Resource database to be guiding principle for choice of a
cropping pattern.

AgRIS Issues & Concerns:

 The input-output policies of government, improved marketing network, rural

connectivity and development of infrastructure played a significant role in
increasing the productivity.
 But with the expanding population, shrinking basic resource of land, and the need
for improving living standards, this development simultaneously caused natural
resource degradation.
 States have moved uni-directionally, which has raised concerns on sustainability,
food & nutritional security and clean environment, which have become issue.

Approach for AgRIS:

 Training of rural youth (men & women) in primary grading, processing,

packaging, and value addition as the demand for processed and value added foods
is on rise and will continue to rise.
 We need to analyze the limiting factors and need a well-planned and long term
programs supported by favorable policies.

3
  The Development of locally relevant content is the critical success factor of
AgRIS project.
 There is a strong need to present locally relevant information intelligibly in local
language.
 The local contents to be developed consulting at the grassroots.
 These inputs will help providing information that people really need.

ICT Based Agriculture Resources Information System:

The input-output policies of government, improved marketing network, rural

connectivity and development of infrastructure have played a significant role in
increasing the productivity.
But this development has simultaneously caused the natural resource degradation. One of
the emerging challenges for sustainable & integrated agriculture is to recognize the
power and uses of ICT and to effectively use it for improved farm production. There is a
need to establish agriculture local content & knowledge base for ICT driven agriculture.
The Development of locally relevant content is the critical success factor. There is a
strong
need to present locally relevant information intelligibly in local language. The local
contents need to be developed by consulting at the grassroots. These inputs will help in
providing information that people really need.
The agriculture development implies in its wider sense the integration of resources,
integration of Technologies, and integration of economic and social factors. This
integrated approach will, therefore lead to the development of a Farming System to
enhance the house hold income by way of increasing the agricultural productivity and by
involving the community in other off-farm activities with optimum utilization of natural,
physical and human resources. Integrated Farming system can go a long way towards
sustaining agriculture productivity. An integration of crop husbandry, animal husbandry
and water resources in the same piece of land not only meet the varied needs of the
farmer such as food, fodder, milk, and fuel but also helps sustain agricultural
productivity.
The farmer must know about the soil, crop rotation, thousands of kinds of seeds
available, fertilizers and pesticides, the weather, water table, animal husbandry and feed,
package of practices, price and political situations, enabling to decide what crops to grow
and which animal to raise. As the saying goes “Khet aur Kisan – Desh ki Jaan”, the e-
Agriculture vision is to make our farmers progressive, prosperous and high tech, which
literally means in Hindi “ Unnat, Samridh aur Uchch Taknique Kisan”.

Proposed Methodology for implementation:

4
 Establish data collection Performa to have an inventory and preliminary analysis of
the available relevant data. Thereafter the studies be undertaken for planning,
development & forecasting purposes.
 Establish the requirements, identification of data collecting agency & agreement
signing, Printing of data collection formats along with instructions. Understanding
data sets by the agency data enumerators and their training by NIC team.

 Survey of the project Area: Collection of firsthand information as per Performa.

Teams of enumerators each headed by a supervisor would be deputed in the field for
the necessary surveys and interviews. The outcome of the field survey and interviews
as recorded in AgRIS Performa, will be analyzed for few villages to ascertain the
quality and sufficiency of collected data.

 Defining of Content Structure: The content structure will be designed and

necessary Data digitization software will be developed and tested. Once the survey is
done and the relevant data collected, the data entry will be initiated through reputed
data entry agencies, ensuring error free data. This part of the activity will require
domain experts, who will structure the content outline based on the field inputs.

 Content Development: Based on finalized structure of the content, final Web

enabled application will be developed. This part of the activity will require maximum
time, as it is the core of the entire exercise. At least 5 to 6 domain experts & content
developers would be required to be on the job. First draft of the developed contents
will be available for final editing, observations and outcomes.

 Uploading of Content: The final activity will be of content writing, editing, proofing
and uploading in the web portal. The interactive portal will have OLTP and OLAP
capabilities. This exercise will require mostly the desk job with the best of content
and editing professionals and domain experts on the job. It is assumed that about 4-5
editors, writers, proof readers and IT professionals would be required to be on the job
to accomplish this final stage of the project.

Framework must focus on the following deliverables:

 Development of AgRIS Portal, Unicode compliance, to provide one stop interface

for all farming community services with institutional linkages etc.
 Decision Support System on Production Practices and Systems for strengthening
Advisory Services to facilitate farmers in adopting good agricultural production
(GAP) practices.

5
  Building Agricultural Resources Information System using Standardized
methodology/ best practices.
 Providing guidelines for establishing producers companies to maximize price
realization by producer farmers
 To deliberate on Potential Geographical Indicators (GI) and IPR including
Traditional Knowledge for benefit to farming community for produces ,
 Preparation of a technological architecture converging GIS, GPS, Web based
solutions (SOA, Web services and software Engineering), Database, Expert
Systems, Knowledge Base and other related technologies
 Developing of a comprehensive spatial database on various parameters related to
land use, input use (seed, fertilizer, agricultural technology, agricultural credit),
water use, etc.; including creation of Metadata of Spatial Data Infrastructure.
 Framework for collection/ validation/ analysis and input of spatial and non-spatial
village level data from agro-economic sectors of importance; Localization of
contents.
 Identification of intervention areas through generation of thematic maps;
 Data sharing, dissemination and updation framework.
 Reporting model and knowledge processing framework with every level of
Decision Support System (DSS).
 Application Software Development & Implementation.
 Farmers Training System and Extension activities; Capacity building of
stakeholders.
 Change Management Support and System Maintenance, Post implementation
support.
 Critical Failure Analysis and Knowledge Warehouse.

Village level Data Items for Agriculture Sector

AGRICULTURE
 Crop production details under important crops, fruits & vegetables, Name of crop,
Area cultivated, Average Yield.

 Agriculture inputs & consumption - Consumption of fertilizers (NPK), pesticides,

seeds, No. of seeds distribution Centres, No. of pesticides depots, No. of fertilizer
shops.
 Agriculture machinery & implements - Sugarcane crushers, Tractors, Carts,
Trailers, Tube wells (Diesel & Electricity), Wells & tanks, No. of implements
repairing Centres, No. of pump sets, Lakes & ponds, Total waste land.
 Area: Geographical area, Area under assured agriculture, Net area irrigated by Wells,
Tube wells, Canals, Ponds, Tanks, Lakes.
 Gross storage of all percolation tanks, Agro climatic regions, Yearly Normal rainfall,
Monsoon positions, Average depth to water table, Area not suited ground water re-
charge, Depth to water table range & area, Major Soil classes, Common agriculture
crop diseases.

6
ANIMAL HUSBANDRY
 No. of live stokes - cattle's, buffalos, ponies, cows, mules, donkeys , sheep's, dogs,
goats, pigs, poultry farms, piggary farms.
 Veterinary dispensary and various veterinary Centres - Civil Vet. Hospital, Regional
Vet Centres, Civil Vet. Dispensaries, Artificial insemination Centres, Stock mans
Centres, Poultry extension Centre, Sheep wool extension Centres, Vet. Surgeons, No.
of VLDAs (Vet. livestock Dispensary Assistant), Animal Husbandry Assistants, No.
of dressers & furriers, No. of Bulls kept for insemination, Gaushala & Animal
Catching Centres, No. of slaughter houses, No. of eggs laid during the year, No. of
hatcheries.

 Milk Production - Total Milk Production, Milk Plants & capacity, Meat processing
Centres, Mil Chilling Centres, Total no. of Dairies.

FISHRIES
 Area stocked in hectares, Fishing licenses issued, No. of Ponds/tanks used for
Pisciculture,
 Total Fish production during the year – Marketing, Salted, Canning, Freezing, Sun
dried, Deductions, Miscellaneous, No. of beneficiaries, Total income from
Pisciculture etc.