E-Krishibook: the Social Media for Farmer’s Community

Abstract

Smartphones and social media have made the world shrink to communicate with people from all around the globe. In the recent years, mobile phones have become more smarter. Android based smartphones are the most popular one as many applications are freely available to users. The use of smartphones has increased in every sector. Agriculture is one of those sectors that are using technology for modern age farming. Along with technology , Social media also plays an important role so if there is any platform where farmers can communicate and form an online community to share, resolve, communicate and sell their production could play a crucial role in their development.

Farmers face major problems because they may have less knowledge about modern technology and internet and how social media can help them. This makes them inadequate to take more advantage of internet to access information related to farming. According to UNESCO report 64% of population in India cannot use the internet due to lack of technical knowledge. To bridge this gap we have developed an android based application that is simple and user friendly as farmers are also using smartphones for communication.

In this application, we have made such an interface which can be easily used by farmers with less knowledge about social media. Farmer will have a two step verification activity that will provide more security to user. Farmers can easily update any post related to their production, crop diseases, equipment to sell etc. This application provides information about whether forecasts and different government schemes in three different languages like Hindi, Marathi and English so it is highly beneficial to farmers to be updated with weather as well as government schemes. This Android Application will help the farmer in many ways in order to get all the information about agriculture collectively. This application will be a great support to the digitalization of agriculture and farming sector along with farmers.

In today's expeditious world of internet, everything has become online. If we want to shop something there are many e-commerce websites available, if we want to connect with new people there are social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Such platforms are growing rapidly for business purpose and these platforms can boost them to a height. In India, Agriculture is one of the major occupation and it is required to focus on the agriculture sector especially to boost their knowledge about modern farming techniques, products and how farmers can come together on a common platform and connect socially. The aim is to make farmers share the knowledge to other farmers locally as well as those who are located remotely through a social platform. Other farmers may be unaware that they can connect, share, get solutions etc through social media. To match the pace of famers with the speedy changing world, We are developing an Android based application as a knowledge sharing and product selling platform for farmers which will also support the digitalization of Agriculture sector.

In recent years, Use of Android smartphone have become more popular among us. The cost of smartphone is affordable to all with number of free applications to download. Many website provide information on modern farming and agriculture but the format of the information is very dissimilar for farmers to understand, i.e. the information may available in English language which is not native to famers and they can't take advantage of this information So an Android application can provide information on various aspects of agriculture and farming. If farmers want to access website’s information then it is not much handy as computer or laptop is required to access it. As today's world is a world of social media so our app will provide a platform to farmers where they can communicate with each other. Social media is an indispensable communication tool which will bring the community of farmers to connect and sell their productions easily. This will lead to a new revolution in the life of farmers.

In India nearly 70% people are living in villages and out of them almost of the total population rely on agriculture. Information and Communication Technologies play an important role in bringing about sustainable agriculture, development and provide valuable information. This project emphasis farmers so they can give their point of view on a common interest on a common social platform. The application consists of categories for users to view contents of interest. This application will help farmers to share their point of view as well as information about crop, crop diseases, modern farming techniques etc. Here farmers can also promote their business by directly posting their production for sale using e-krishibook application. We did understand now that people are looking for something unique that allows them to communicate with large group of people with same interest. Now social media is the best way to promote method of farming and share farming related ideas with other farmers. As now social media is growing with rapid information about everything that may be useful to someone’s interest or not so we have made an Android based application which can be easily used by farmers to connect with other farmers without any futile information. Some major features will be “Mandi Bhav”(Market price) information, weather forecasting, Government schemes etc.

The application will have a two step verification to authenticate the user. The user can update post, share their views, add new friends, create a social network, sell the production, can stay up-to-date with weather forecast and government schemes with the help of this single application.

For making any product successful it is necessary to find out community which will purchase your product .so our social media app that is e- krishibook the focuse is on need of the farmers community and what problems they are facing nowadays.in this app they can get all the information regarding farming and modern agricultural techniques. Nowadays low cost android smartphones are available at cheap cost which can be afford by farmers and its its also gives facility to choose language according to convenience of a farmer so they can take advantage from this app easily.

The In e- krishibook app there several functions are included which provide full privacy and security which are very important terms considering any social media application. In this app there are features like mandibhav weather forecast and government schemes so any farmer who need to know about any of this mentioned above then he can directly access any information through this application .

Technology is very important factor considering any social media that how scalable the technology is from that it will consider that application will be lose or fail so e- krishibook app is android application so it can easily run on any smartphone because android phones are cheap and comman among all .and it requires firebase for storing database which is secure and maintain data confidentiality and java is used for backend purpose of this app .

As any social media app in e-krishibook is also user can also update their status regarding anything they can update their status. For eg if any farmers is having any kind of crop in their farms so they can upload their status reagarding certain crop production .so a farmers can update his status in this app.

E-Krishibook is an platform for the farmers where they can easily communicate with the other. It supports three languages that is English Marathi and Hindi so there is no language barrier for farmers they can choose language according to their convenience. Here farmers can upload pictures of their crop and also there is facility of weather forecast is provided over here so rather than going for multiple apps this one will solve all queries related to farming.

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