Farming software applications of Grameen Intel receives hearty admiration in Nepal

23 February 2014, Dhaka:  World’s first IT social business company Grameen Intel Social Business Ltd. (GISB) has recently organized a training session for farmers and entrepreneurs in Nepal in association with High Value Agricultural project (HVAP) of the Government of Nepal and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

The session was designed towards introducing information and communication technology (ICT) as a promising way to help farmers make smart use of the limited resources available to maximize productivity and profits.

Pavel Hoq -Chief Operating Officer, Srinivas Garudachar - Director, Strategic Business Development, Saqif Nayeem Khan - Project Officer of Grameen Intel Social Business (GISB) along with other officials of HVAP and IFAD were present at the five daylong training sessions in the Regional Livestock Service Directorate of Shurkhet, Nepal.

It may be mentioned that The Ministry of Agricultural Development (MoAD), Nepal launched e-Agriculture program in the district as a pilot project. The project has brought cheers on the face of local farmers. At present, four different software programs – ānkur, mrittikā, protikār and vistār - have been installed in the computer handed over to local agriculture cooperatives.  The High Value Agriculture Project (HVAP) under the MoAD has launched the project in Sano Surkhet, Pokhari Kaada, Mehalkuna and Uttarganga VDCs.

Given the technologies on offer are new and previously untested in Nepal, questions on validity are only logical. Does it provide accurate results in the context of Nepal? To tackle these very questions, experienced soil scientists were purposefully invited to test and verify the outputs of the software applications. And after calculating and comparing the recommendations provided by the software to that of the government’s own agriculture guide, Senior Soil Scientist at the Soil Management Directorate, Dr. Chandra Risal, gave a hearty thumbs-up.

Dr. Chandra Risal said the new technology has become a boon for local farmers. “They no longer need to visit experts for even small problems,” Risal said, adding, “They can find solution to the problems in their village itself.”

Pavel Hoq -Chief Operating Officer of GISB said, “Today’s global challenges demand improvements in crop yields from every acre of land.  We are quite confident that our software applications will be immensely beneficial to the farmers of Nepal.”

According to Srinivas Garudachar, Director of Strategic Business Development at GISB, the technologies on offer are not limited to agriculture but extend to enabling rural development as a whole. Improvement of productivity and income provides the poor farmer household the opportunity to afford and realise other unmet needs that were aspirational pipe dreams eg. Better living conditions -health, food, supplies, education, sanitation, transport.  Empowered by information and communication technologies that create a path of information across villages, districts and nations, rural entrepreneurs can leverage the opportunities offered by internet connectivity to venture into various development activities lacking there in communities and make a living out of providing these much needed services.

It may be mentioned that Grameen Intel Social Business offers a range of revolutionary agricultural software applications to cater modernized scientific farming and enable farmers to achieve sustainable high yield on their crops. These software applications have already been deployed in different projects in countries like Cambodia Bangladesh, India and Macedonia, among others.

These software applications can provide all kind of agriculture related suggestions in a variety of categories including for seed selection and recommendation by ānkur software, soil nutrient analysis and fertilizer recommendation by mrittikā, crop protection recommendation protikār and direct market or buyer information to farmers by vistār software. The combination of all these applications is believed to be revolutionary in crop production.

These software applications are fully designed and developed by product development team of Grameen Intel Social Business Ltd. in Bangladesh.