Transformative Potential of Agricultural Mobile Market Information System in Tamilnadu, India
The agricultural sector is the largest and most critical economic sector and a developing country like India, with its economic backbone as agriculture, is highly dependent to sustain its population. To compete with other agricultural economies, a need exists to create effective linkage between the seat of agricultural production and market forces involved in the provision of goods to the consumers within India. A strong network communication must be established between the various stakeholders of agricultural trade to facilitate a balance between demand and supply. With the advent of mobile phones, internet, and other Information and Communication Technologies, new possibilities and multi-dimensional factors that create instant communication between the target groups have emerged and these ICT tools could be used as a source of agricultural information dissemination to the farmers. This paper analyses mobile based agricultural Market Information Services (MIS) that deliver critical market price information to farmers in Tamilnadu, India. The study also provides an overview of the ICT based mobile market linkage systems and analyses the operability of such projects. The study also assesses the benefits of such projects in providing relevant information to the farmers and the emerging opportunities for rural farmers to make constructive use of the e-agriculture projects.