Agriculture, including crop and animal husbandry, forestry and agro-forestry, fisheries, and agro-industries, provides livelihoods to over 70 per cent of the Indian population. Multifunctionality - an economic activity (producing goods) and a service to the community (food security, rural employment, and environmental obli-gations such as soil conservation, sustainable natural resource management and biodiversity protection) - is thus crucial to sustainable agricultural and rural development in our country. Multifun-ctional agriculture is the bottom line for integrated rural development.

Agricultural development, along with village and cottage industries, tiny and micro enterprises, are the cornerstone for promoting sustainable rural livelihoods. Our vision is to realise an economically and socially vibrant agricultural industry i.e. to accelerate commercialisation of innovative, alternative and value-added agricultural and farm related enterprises, in rural areas. This development strategy, inter alia, facilitates skill improvement, providing employment in rural areas, transfer of technology, rural industrialisation and promoting self-reliance among the people and to build up a strong rural community base. An agricultural knowledge and information system for rural empowerment and improved livelihoods i.e. e-farmer, is the need of the hour.

This paper broadly deals with the government’s digital initiatives and agenda (viz., Agrisnet, Agris, Agmarknet, Dacnet, Vistarnet, Aphnet, Fishnet, Hortnet, Seednet, Ppin, Coopnet, Fertnet, Arisnet, Afpinet, Arinet, Ndmnet, etc), as a step towards “reaching” agricultural knowledge and technology to the Small Holders (Resource-Poor-Farmers) of the country. The AGMARKNET has already emerged as the sun-shine website for farmers to bargain better prices for their produce, and marching ahead towards becoming an e-Commerce and e-Business portal in India. AGMARKNET programme plays a catalytic role for ushering in “market-led agricultural extension” in India, highly scalable, planned through bottom-up process, and implemented through active involvement and collaboration of agricultural market committees in India. This digital development in rural areas of India facilitates rural prosperity, rural empowerment, and a warehousing of data for development – a step towards digital inclusion to foster rural enterprise in India.

Government’s initiatives on agricultural ICT in India
The Vision 2020 document of the central Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (DAC) envisages that “the tools of IT will provide networking of Agriculture Sector not only in the country but also globally and the Centre and State Government Departments will have reservoir of databases”; and also will bring farmers, researchers, scientists and administrators together by establishing “Agriculture Online” through exchange of ideas and information. ICTs diffusion and infusion have many potential applications spanning the breadth of the agricultural industry, at all scales of organisation from farmer, to cooperative and professional bodies, from farm machinery vendors, fertiliser and chemical companies, insurance, regulators, and commodities, to agronomists, consultants, and farm advisors.

According to the National IT Task Force (1999) recommendation (No.79), “the Government shall take all necessary steps to boost IT for agriculture and integrated rural development”. The Ministry of Agriculture and National Informatics Centre (NIC) also emphasised informatics for Agricultural development in the national conference on “Informatics for Sustainable Agricultural Development (ISDA-95). Many follow up actions (ICT projects: AGMARKNET, DACNET, etc) were taken up, to provide relevant agricultural information in rural areas, helping farmers to improve their labor productivity, increase their yields, and realise a better price for their produce. This initiative is based on the recommendations of ISDA-95 Conference (Informatics for Sustainable Agricultural Development), includes: -

• AGRISNET: An infrastructure network upto block level agricultural offices facilitating agricultural extension services and agribusiness activities to usher in rural prosperity
• AGMARKNET: With a road map to network 7000 Agricultural produce wholesale markets and 32000 rural markets
• ARISNET: Agricultural Research Information System Network
• SeedNET: Seed Informatics Network
• CoopNet: To network 93000 Agricultural Primary Credit Societies (PACS) and Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Societies to usher in ICT enabled services and rural transformation
• HORTNET: Horticultural Informatics Network
• FERTNET: Fertilisers (Chemical, Bio and Organic Manure) Informatics Network facilitating “Integrating Nutrient Management” at farm level
• VISTARNET: Agricultural Extension Information System Network
• PPIN: Plant Protection Informatics Network
• APHNET: Animal production and Health Informatics Network networking about 42000 Animal Primary Health Centres
• FISHNET: Fisheries Informatics Network
• LISNET: Land Information System network linking all institutions involved in land and water management for agricultural productivity and production systems, which has now evolved as “Agricultural Resources Information System” project during the Tenth Plan being implemented through NIC.
• AFPINET: Agricultural and Food Processing Industries Informatics Network
• ARINET: Agricultural and Rural Industries Information System Network to strengthen Small and Micro Enterprises (SMEs)
• NDMNET: Natural Disaster Management Knowledge Network
• Weather NET: Weather Resource System of India

India is expected to become a “Knowledge Society” by 2008 and by which time, any farmer in a remote village can demand and get the following information:

• Land use planning for cropping strategy for farmers fields based on integrated information on soil, water, weather, fertiliser and pest management models;
• How and where to get seeds or good quality nursery plants;
• Prevailing prices of farm equipments, agricultural produce, products and series of such set of information, which can lead to high productivity and optimum cost benefit to the farmers.

To achieve “knowledge society” in agriculture, the following things should happen:

• An agriculture information centre in each village;
• Interactive exchange of information for planning and day-to-day operations by farmers;
• Availability of all the extension and advisory services on demand.

Various study results strongly support that the “payoff” effect of ICT on economic growth can be achieved only through a robust National Information Infrastructure (NII), i.e. AGRISNET for the agricultural sector that supports ICT adoption and applications in pre-harvest and post-harvest supply chain activities. As a step towards “reaching” technology to the small holders (Resource-Poor-Farmers) of the Country, the Central Ministry of Agriculture have taken initiatives to build up an Informatics Network - AGRISNET: A NICNET based Agricultural Informatics and Communication - during the Tenth Plan (2002-07).

During the Ninth Plan, this proposal did not materialise due to bureaucratic entangle. This ICT Network envisages to facilitate an integrated approach of ‘Internet Technology” and “Sustainable Agricultural, Rural and Backward Area Development” with its farm and non-farm linkages. This digital agenda informatics-led development facilitates ushering in agricultural governance in the country, and it is essential to make the AGRISNET as the rural infrastructure reaching upto 6.5 Lakh villages. The DACNET Programme (http://dacnet.nic.in) is recognised as an “e-GOV4D1 ” model in India.

AGMARKNET: A warehousing of “data-for-development” on Internet
In view of globalisation, the main players of the future would no longer be conventional landowners but agri-businesses linked directly to multinational food corporations (Peter Bunyard, 2002)1. Global competition and new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are forging new relationships within and between, different layers of agribusiness, transforming the industry from a chain to a complex web. e-Commerce is growing fastest among businesses and facilitates companies to integrate and maximise changes. The industry developments provide an insight into trends, potential impacts and prospects, as given below:

• e-Marketplace/Neutral e-Hub
• e-Distribution sites/Distributor model
• e-Procurement sites/Aggregation model

e-Marketplaces are expected to emerge as a dominant force in e-Commerce, accounting to 56% of the value of all Business to Business (B2B) transactions by 2004, compared to 7.5% in 2001 (IDC, 2000)2. Another trend in e-Commerce is in the supply of information. “Business to Business” (B2B)3 and “Business to Consumer” (B2C) raises questions for agriculture, because traditionally farmers have never been equal trading partners with either the upstream input suppliers or with the downstream retailers and distributors. Another trend is the current domination of B2B developments by large and medium sized farms.

According to http://www.emarketer.com, although 98% of medium and large business was expected to be online by the end of 2002, 82% of small business would also be online. However, as with many concepts and trends, application to the agricultural industry raises questions. There appears to be a distinct difference between ‘Farm Business’ and ‘Up and Down Stream Business’:

• Farm Business - limited web presence - restricted to direct trade with final customer often in niche market and not to retailers or processors.
• Up and Down Stream Businesses - significant developments - sites for buying or selling with a large number of individual business, farmers or customers

Classical farm businesses do not appear to have either the capacity (capital, labour, and expertise) or the necessity (output) to set up and maintain sites at the same level as for up-stream and down-stream business. Business upstream and downstream of the farm business are generally more consolidated and are more likely to have the capacity and necessity to set up and maintain a site. Farmers cannot replicate offline behaviour online.

As a step towards globalisation of agriculture, the Union Ministry of Agriculture has embarked upon an ICT project: NICNET based Agricultural Marketing Information System Network (AGMARKNET) in the country. This AGMARKNET project has already networked 735 Agricultural Produces Wholesale Markets (APWMs), during 2000-02 and embarked upon additional 2000 Markets during the Tenth Plan Period (2002-2007). The Government initiative of networking of agricultural produce markets (AGMARKNET)4 and the AGMARKNET portal would facilitate the development of B2B and B2C e-Commerce model in the country (Moni, 2001)5. This project has the potential of expansion to about 7000 Wholesale Markets located through out the country and further to 35000 Rural Markets in India. This ICT Project is a farmer-centric project to put the progressive farmers on ‘global free trade zone on Internet’.

AGMARKNET appears to be filling a huge gap by providing access to information at reasonable cost. The AGMARKNET venture is a heartening initiative from the much criticised and slow-to-react government, especially on the issue of easing the infrastructural constraints on agriculture (The Times of India, 2002)6. The advantages of this database accrue to the farmers, as they are not forced to sell their produce in the nearest market at uneconomical prices. The challenge, if the full potential of such ventures have utilised, is to take IT to rural India in a big way. Constraints/Challenges are: (a) connectivity in rural areas, (b) training the stakeholders and (c) ensuring data updation in real time frame (http://www.eapf.net/casestudies/in/agmarket.asp). Anand Sagar (2003)7 considers AGMARKNET, a step towards rural empowerment” and also data for development. Kari Holland of Washington University (USA)8 categorises AGMARKNET (India) as follows:

• Nationwide market information for wholesale produce,
• Project supported by various departments and state boards of agriculture,
• Access mainly through the Internet,
• Customers pay (some),
• Computer facilities at the markets,
• Software for download,
• Daily market prices,
• Information collected by nodes in the various markets,
• Weekly trends,
• Information on loans, policies and regulations,
• Income has increased (for some), and
• Bypass middlemen.

The country is now witnessing a unified ‘agricultural marketing price information system’ for the entire country. The general hypothesis is ‘the more farmer produces the less he gets’ – i.e. not getting adequate returns for his toils.

Conclusion
The increasing trend of agricultural production has brought new challenges. This AGMARKNET venture benefits the farming communities from the new global market access opportunities and also strengthened the internal agricultural marketing system in India. There have been requests for AGMARKNET venture in various developing countries (ASEAN), etc. in view of its operational efficiency in India.

Footnotes Peter Bunyard (2002) : ‘When the Cheapest is not cheerful’ The Ecologist, April 2002, pp. 30-32 IDC.2000: eBusiness Trends, IDC Newsletter (see http://www.idc.com/newsletter) ‘Business to Business’ (B2B) implies similarities or equal partners in trade; Business to Consumer or producer' (B2B) implies the two parties. ‘AGMARKNET: NICNET Based Agricultural Marketing Information System Network - A Sponsored Project of the Directorate of Marketing and Inspection (Ministry of Agriculture)’, February, 2001 and also see http://www.agmarknet.nic.in Moni .M (2001): ‘Leveraging Information Technology for development of Agri-Business – Agribusiness : B2B or B2C e-Commerce Model?’, presented at the National Seminar on ‘Managing Agri-Business in the New Millennium: Challenges and Opportunities’, organised by All India Management Association (AIMA) , 20-21 July 2001, New Delhi Times of India : ‘Website to help farmers bargain better’, dated 31st May 2002 Anand Sagar K (2003), ‘Agmarknet-Rural Empowerment: Data for Development’, Geospatial Today, Vol.2 (2), 2003 and also www. Geospatialtoday. com/ journal/Vol2Issue2 http://www.cis.washington.edu/courses/pbaf537d