Shillong, Jan 6: Farmers of Northeast can now interact with top scientists of the country and seek solutions to their problems related to farming, market, health and
weather dynamics from their nearest Village Resource Centres.
The Shillong-based North Eastern Space Application
Centre (NESAC) in association with Bangalore-based Indian
Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has set up 34 VRCs across
the North-East, and proposes to set up around 50 more to bring
the farmers closer to experts who can guide them in various
fields.
Farmers across 10 VRCs of Assam interacted with
agricultural experts who were stationed at NESAC during the
'Farmers Virtual Congress' as part of the 96th Indian Science
Congress here on Monday.
NESAC Director P P Nageswara Rao said the VRC would
serve as single window access to information for farmers
across the region with respect to various problems faced by
them during cultivation, marketing, health and weather
dynamics.
He said, "Normally it is not possible for the farmers
to interact with a galaxy of experts. The VRC network would
serve this purpose."
Once the system comes up, the farmers of the region
would sit with a interpreter in front of a computer set in the
VRC and would seek advise from the experts sited at the base
in any part of the country.
The NESAC has collaborated with the Assam Agricultural
University, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Guwahati
Medical College and other institutes to fructify the advisory
system.
The ISRO has funded the entire hardware, transponder
time and bandwidth in the VRCs, while the local collaborators
in each state like Assam Branch of Indian Tea Association
(ABITA) in Assam would bear other costs like sponsoring a
local coordinator.
Of the 34 VRC set up so far, 16 are in Sikkim, 8 in
Nagaland and 10 across Assam. The VRC are likely to be
functional by June next year, and NESAC proposes to hold one
interaction with the farmers of the NE states once a week.
The agro-meteorology advisory services would be
provided by the NESAC itself.
Bureau Report
First Published: Tuesday, January 06, 2009, 00:00