Microsoft Helps Farmers by Creating Videos on Best Practices

Editors note: This one seemed too good to pass up. Reposting here an article from the Times of India. Who says Tech and Ag can’t be friends?

Microsoft helps farmers by creating videos on best practices
20 Jul 2008, 0428 hrs IST, Prashanth G N,TNN

BANGALORE: A global technology giant isn’t usually expected to take much interest in agriculture. Here’s one with a difference.

Microsoft, which spends most of its time making computers better in distant Seattle, is quietly producing videos for farmers in Kanakapura on improved farming techniques.

The Bangalore Microsoft Research Lab’s ‘Technology for Emerging Markets’ programme has reached 5,000 farmers, in and around Kanakapura and parts of Chitradurga, so far. The lab’s Digital Green initiative is part of the company’s Information, Communication, Technology (ICT) for Development module through which it aims to use technology to aid development in emerging economies.

Researcher Rikin Gandhi told TOI: “Being one of the largest companies in the world, we believe it is our responsibility to use technology in emerging markets to improve development. Agriculture is a huge and crucial sector in India and we are working to see how we can use our expertise to improve farming conditions, practices and lives of farmers.”

Gandhi and his colleagues make videos of farm practices that yield the best results. The videos of progressive farmers are taken to other farmers who are thus enabled to adopt methods and practices of the progressive farmers.

Using this method, Microsoft has built a database that covers almost every farmer in 13 villages of Kanakapura and a few in Chitradurga.

Gandhi said: “We differentiate farming techniques with good results and those without and communicate the difference to farmers. An example is seeding technique. Random versus systematic seeding shows that the latter consumes less water, increases yield and occupies less space. The same is communicated to farmers.”

Similarly, there is data on vermi-compost, seed germination and remedies for diseases. Crucially, the data comes from farmers themselves, and extension officials of the livestock and animal husbandry department.

Gandhi said: “They’ve been a great help. They act as the local management team. They give us the content and we put together quality information on farming and take it from village to village. We believe there is lot of clarity when farmers see on video what they themselves are doing. We get farmers to make these videos and be a part of them.”

This dissemination of best farming practices has yielded results. “We’ve done our own evaluation that suggests a seven-fold increase in adoption of best farming techniques by farmers and a 10-fold increase in cost-benefit ratios. People are using less water, incurring lower input costs and getting more,” Gandhi said.

More farmers have taken interest in the video packages and many have even started applying new techniques on their lands, Gandhi said. For example, farmers have taken to grid seeding which has reduced water consumption and input costs.

Microsoft plans to stretch this to every crop and season.

“To prove useful, our intervention has to increase yield, reduce costs and enable farmers to have more to sell in the market. Ultimately, the farmers’ income must go up. That’s when it all matters,” he added.

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