Indian farmers have to reckon with numerous variables in the agriculture system. Some of them namely, land and water resources, labour, seeds etc. are under his control whereas the price of produce, pesticides, fertilisers, power, weather and climatic change are beyond his means to manage them. Farmers are more concerned about the choice of crops/varieties that are appropriate for the changing weather and climatic conditions and more conscious about site-specific crop management so that the input costs are minimal and less risky. Farmer needs information and advice on these aspects. There are other players in the agricultural sector – such as financial institutions, traders, researchers, and extension workers. Each one of them directly or indirectly affects the efficiency of the system and needs a different set of information and advisory services. At present, the Indian agriculture extension system deals with 85 million land-holdings and about 500 million farmers, including farm women, young farmers and agricultural laborers. An extension system howsoever vast, cannot reach them fully on time, especially in the North Eastern Region (NER) where the terrain is rugged and inaccessible.

There is still scope to improve the methods of reaching the unreached and to create more livelihood opportunities in the remote inaccessible terrain of this region despite the commendable efforts of the extension machinery of various departments.

In the Indian context and especially in the NER, multiple extension agencies, training institutions, input and information suppliers are needed to compliment and supplement the current efforts. It is in this context that an example of using modern tools of remote sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS) and ICT in developing an enterprise called Agricultural Planning and Information Bank (APIB).

Methodology of developing APIB
The first step in developing an APIB is to conduct a primary survey on the information needs of the farming community; identify the needs that are most important and essential; categorise those areas that are into highly dynamic and required to be supplied during various stages of crop growing season to the static one time need.

The second step is to take stock of the natural resources potential of the district, block or a group of villages using remotely sensed data from Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) or other satellites and evaluate their availability, accessibility and usability for meeting the food, fodder, fuel wood and fiber needs of the human and bovine population of the area under study. Then, using the tools of GIS, the maps of natural resources (the supply components) and socio-economic parameters (demand components) are integrated to delineate coherent land units that can be allocated for appropriate land use, cropping systems and farming systems.

The third step is to collect non-spatial and attribute data through extensive organisational linkages established with the Universities of Agricultural Sciences, Institutions of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Department of Agriculture and Horticulture, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, various non-government and private organisations in and around the study area. These data sources are then pooled and synthesised into planning advises using GIS and relational database management tools.

The fourth step is to convince the people at the village level on the benefits of alternatives to the current practices and reach them through the most accessible channels of communication. The flow of events in the methodology is shown in figure 1.

Planning Advisory Services offered by APIB and their dissemination
Spatial information: The natural resources endowments of any administrative units (district, taluk, block or a Mandal), present land use/land cover, maps showing areas that have residual soil moisture for taking up second or third crop, surface and ground water potential and areas suitable for appropriate land use practices that are useful for district/state level planners, rural financial institutions and extension agencies. Information on crop acreage/ production estimation and crop condition assessment in the domestic and foreign countries, useful for the farmers in deciding which crop would be more in demand in the market and profitable as obtained using satellite remote sensing, spatial variation in crop yields and input usage as derived from vegetation indices, GIS-based administrative units (viz., khatha numbers, villages, mandals, blocks and taluks/districts) that are having unfavorable spatial variability.