An analysis of ICT being used in development of masses.

1. 1 | ICT For Development
A Project Report on Digital Green: ICT
in Agriculture
By:
Anshuman Kamila (4011/20)
Ashutosh Singh (4018/20)

2. 2 | ICT For Development
DIGITAL GREEN- ICT in Agriculture
Digital Green –INTRODUCTION
Digital Green (DG) was established to design, build and deploy information and communication
technology (ICT) for agriculture which would boost the effectiveness of extension services and
social changes. It is an independent non-governmental organization (NGO) which majorly
targets on training farmers for creating short videos which records their problems, enact and
share possible solutions and takes forward the success stories to other farmers.
Digital Green was initially a project of Microsoft research India’s Technology for Emerging
markets but later in 2008, it became an independent NGO.
DG, along with its partners, drives this entire project primarily as a technology enabled means
of cost effective means of communication, and an even effective way to bring about a change in
the society by involving local farmers to reach out to other farmers. It also pulls in different
researchers and agro based communities to share and spread relevant information about
better farming through their videos. DG and its partners are trying to accelerate the model
scale up across small farming communities in South Asia and Africa. They are committed to
maintaining quality in terms of
 The effectiveness of the production and dissemination of relevant local contents
 The impact which such videos will create, which includes the scope of a modern
sustainable agricultural growth and improves the socio economic stature and
also the self-efficacy of the agro based communities.

3. 3 | ICT For Development
The Problem…
There are over 6000 villages in India. These village communities are primarily involved in
farming. In fact, 60 % of India’s 1.1 billion populations are farmers i.e. double the population of
entire United States. The farmers tend to be marginal and small farmers, with about 1-3 acres
of land, and they make an average income of 1-2 $ per day.
Farmers face many issues such as droughts and rising costs of fertilizers and pesticides. Crop
yields have diminished after years of intensive farming, and farmers are often unable to get fair
price of their yield. While other sectors of the county has a prospect to grow, farmers struggle
to keep up .Many resort to selling off their lands and migrating to cities, few even commit
suicide.
Farming is a traditional profession and the bulk of what farmers do is passed on through
generations. They did what they already knew, this has changed considerably. Farmers
increasingly rely on hearsay of neighbors and the information of external agencies like the
government, fertilizer and pesticide companies and NGOs. Government extension workers
often visit farmers and provide personalized advice to farmers about their crops. This approach
has problem of a scale as a very large number of staff is required for individual farmers. One
approach that government has taken is to have farmer related broadcasts in TV and radio
programs. These suffer from multiple problems; the programs are too general and often
produced by experts who usually come from a very different socio economic background. The
farmers are unable to relate to the content and often end up tuning out.
Why DG?
DG is developing an end to end system to address this problem. They tape agricultural
demonstration of experts and farmers, using a camcorder and we use shared TVs to show the
content in a village. Videos are 8 minutes in length and are often repeated on demand of the
audience. They have experimented
with various approaches to use this
medium for agricultural extension.
What works best is when the
videos shown are mediated by a
human being, and these videos
normal occur in the evening in
makeshifts public places like
temples and streets. Farmers are

4. 4 | ICT For Development
Often interested in knowing the names of the village and the farmers where these practices are
being adopted. To encourage the motivation of peers, DG takes the early adopters of the
village. They started using the interest of the farmers to be recorded on the video as an
incentive to start attracting more people to start using the technique. They are developing a
social network of search with these videos which have layers of local stars encouraging in each
other to be better farmers.
DG has demonstrated early success in popularization of sustainable farming practices in its field
deployment. Number of farmers who are adopting progressing technique is increasing
manifold. This approach is very cost realistic. It bootstraps on the existing social networks of
farmers and uses the power of technology to face the agricultural challenges of rural India. It
will change the paradigm of agricultural extension by enabling farmer participation and
encouraging the learning, adoption and innovation of better agricultural practices. Like the
internet, DG aims to allow anyone, even a farmer to be a content consumer and producer.
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Other progressive farmers
Salesmen (fertilizer, pesticided)
Radio
Television
Newspaper
Extension workers
Cooperative
Buyer
Government demonstration
Others
% farm households (n=51,770)
Ref: Indian NSSO: 2005

5. 5 | ICT For Development
Process Flow
Initiation
The conceptual and operational aspects are
decided and shared and an initial layout of the
problem is formed
Production
The locally relevant videos are produced using a
proper storyboard and is checked for
correctness and quality
Diffusion
The videos are circulated regularly in the
community to affect behavioral change.

6. 6 | ICT For Development
Digital Green Operating Process Top Down
Mobilization
•Building the foundations of a lasting relationship between the community and the partner.
•Mobilization starts with a joint strategy-planning meeting between representatives of the Digital
Green team and the partner.
Situational
Analysis
•The purpose of a situational analysis is to assess how and where the Digital Green system can be
extended based on selection surveys and a randomization process. Steps include-
•Pre-selection of villages, Facilitation meeting with community, Assessment of community
institutions, Final & Random selection of villages, Baseline survey, Team formation, Selection of
resource for video production, dissemination & editing.
Capacity
Building
•Digital Green trainers introduce the components of the system to dedicated staff of the partner
organizations.
•Video production training, Video editing training, Video dissemination training, Online reporting
training, Content and quality checking training
Video
Production
•The Digital Green system involves the production of short digital videos that average 8-12 minutes
in duration on locally relevant agriculture and other livelihood-related subjects, involve local
community members, and feature partner field staff and farmers as experts.
•Identification Of Subject/Content, Writing Storyboard, Video Shooting, Video Post-Production,
Video Quality Assurance
Dissemination
•Dissemination, an element in the Diffusion component of the Digital Green system, is the process
of communicating and spreading information to the community by showing the locally produced
video film on the subject in a structured and systematic manner.
Adoption
•Increasing the adoption of best farming practices that sustainably improve the livelihoods of
farmers is a key objective of any agriculture extension program.
Reporting
•The COCO (Connect Online, Connect Offline) reporting system facilitates the exchange of data
from across field locations and helps in analysing data trends.

7. 7 | ICT For Development
Information Flow-
FarmerBook
It is an open-access
platform which
displays detailed
timeline-based
activities of each
farmer DG works
with along with the
villages plotted on
Google Map.
WonderVillage
To see how the core
work in the field can
connect with
external audiences
who could learn and
engage in issues
related to rural
development, DG
has created a social
game, Wonder
Village, which is
hosted on Facebook.
Analytics
Dashboard
Built on the COCO
database, our
Analytics suite of
dashboards provides
near real-time
information on
performance
targets, field
operations.
Connect Online
Connect Offline
(COCO)
A data management
framework, COCO,
forms the foundation
of DG's technology
stack. It captures data
related to key
processes of DG's
model: video
production, farmers
involved, seasonality,
dissemination, and
adoption of best
practices.
Participation of various
people for content
production
Online Video Repository
(Villages are sent DVDs)
Local Village Mediators
(through shared TV & DVD
player)
Farming
Community
Tools used by Digital Green

8. 8 | ICT For Development
Analysis
The use of video provides:-
 Resource Saving: Human interventions and staff needed are comparatively less
and the cost and time to disseminate information to the other farmers is
considerably reduced.
 Accessibility: The major concern of reaching to the illiterate farmers and to make
them understand the use of such methods for their benefit was reduced
substantially as the information dissemination is being done through visual
means and the mediator is always present for answering any queries.
The early results of use of videos showed considerable improvements as the adoption rate
increased 7 fold over classical extensions i.e. Training and Visit model. The key factors that
boosted the substantial gain of DG were the presence of a local mediator who did the work of
engaging the community. The videos were stored in a database repository and can be viewed
repetitive times. It followed an on-demand nature of the video technology and ensured that the
concepts are grasped as well as the novelty was introduced by showcasing new farmers who
were adopting the practices.
Some farmers were incentivized to adopt those practices in order to feature “on TV” and thus,
video technology has played even a larger role in doing so. DG wanted to stimulate the creation
of “local stars”. The more local farmers featured on the videos, the more it helped to reduce
the gap between the experts and farmers, and helped to authenticate the viability of the
content.
DIGITAL VIDEO FOR EXTENSION

9. 9 | ICT For Development
Analysis continued…
The following shows the sources of new agricultural information that farmers chose to access
information, based on an online survey. The maximum percentage of information was gathered
from private industries which are mostly agro dealers. The second most accessible source of
information was neighbors. Some of the neighbors had indeed listened to media programs
broadcasted on TV, but none of the farmers had attempted any of the practices.
With the intorduction of Digital Green , an average of 280 farmers attended at least one
screening, and with the videos displaying farmers of other villages working on new practices ,
the farmers started accepting these new techniques. Every month, slightly more than one-half
of the the farmers showed their intentions in adopting one of such practices. Below graph
shows the percentage of farmers that adopted at least one new practice in 2007-2008.
Percentage of farmers adopting at
least one new practice

10. 10 | ICT For Development
Cost benefit analysis of Extension Systems
Below is the summary of cost benefit analysis done on the grounds of T&V Control and DG
extension systems. On a cost per adoption basis, DG seemed to have 10 times more benefit and
effectiveness per dollar spent than the earlier extension systems. The farmers felt more
empowered as the decision of new process and techniques were their take and they
themselves were contributing to make their status rise.
Sustainability
Initially, it was found that the just curiosity and novelty about the videos was not making this
process sustainable. Some of the videos were watched and liked more widely while others were
not. But the presence of community mediators helped improve the practice as the queries were
answered while the video was being displayed to the farmers. The total costs of Digital Green is
manageable, as video device costs USD 100-150 each, and the Amazon and Google cloud
computing systems which holds the database is such videos, was free to use for public.
As of now, Digital Green organization is trying to make a more self-sustaining business model by
charging a farmer INR 2.00 for watching a video, and it can cover the recurring costs of the
entire system while a charge of INR 4.00 can cover the initial upfront and capital cost. There is a
high possibility of introducing advertisement and also the agro based dealers can have an ad in
their video of the local seeds they sell.
References
1. http://www.digitalgreen.org/
2. http://www.wikipedia.org/
3. Social Development BBL Series: Building and Applying Technology to Amplify the Effectiveness
of People-based Agriculture Extension Systems. July 7, 2011. Speaker: Rikin Gandhi, Executive
Officer at Digital Green.