What is E-Agriculture?
E-Agriculture is an emerging field that is focused on the improvement of both Agricultural and Rural Development, through improved and advanced information and communication technology processes.
E-Agriculture is basically about the design, development and application of creative and innovative information and communication technologies in the rural sector with its primary focus on Agriculture.
Agriculture is defined as the science or practice of farming which includes cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products.
E-Agriculture is sometimes referred to as ICT in Agriculture. Both are more recent terms in the field of Agriculture and Rural Development practices.
ICT in Agriculture or E-Agriculture Solutions have been created and tested all over the world to help farmers and agriculturists improve their livelihood through increase in agricultural productivity and income by reducing the risks in farming.
E-Agriculture now moves beyond technology. It further increase the implementation of technology with multimedia, internet, knowledge and culture, with the singular goal of improving communication and the learning process across various sectors of agriculture, both locally, regionally and globally. Including facilitation, support of standard and norms, technical support, capacity building, education and extension are all the fundamental concepts of E-Agriculture.
Features and Characteristics of E-Agriculture
Some of the Features of E-Agriculture includes:
1. ICT-Based Solutions: Applications of E-Agriculture in extensive agricultural systems in developed countries are moved towards using sophisticated information technologies to improve the quality and quantity of agricultural products, in other to maximize profits. This is the same with precision agriculture in which farmers are making use of computers and technologies to cut costs, improve yields and protect the environment, information gathering, marketing and sale of agricultural products conducted over electronic networks such as the internet and extranets. On the other hand, many developing farmers’ knowledge is improved and updated through grass root level initiatives of using ICTs, e-learning as well as distance education modalities to enhance the knowledge and capacity.
2. Precision Agriculture: In precision agriculture or site-specific farming, farmers use ICT tools and other technologies to obtain more precise information about agricultural resources which allows them to identify, analyze and to manage the spatial and temporal variability of soil and plants for optimum profitability, sustainability, and protection of the environment.
3. E-Commerce in Agriculture: Improved production and high yields due to the involvement of technology in agriculture brings about the need for farmers to look for profitable markets beyond what local communities offer. Electronic Commerce has helped greatly in this area. E-Commerce which is the general exchange of goods and services with the aid of the internet, is having a significant impact on agriculture because, it allows farmers to market and sell their products to anyone in any place with ease. With E-Commerce in agriculture, farmers can now easily meet their customers with little or no cost.
4. Exchange of Information: E-Agriculture offers an improved and efficient medium of information exchange and communication for the benefits of rural communities farm households and the rural service providers that are involved in the provision of agricultural, financial and communication services.
Benefits of E-Agriculture
There are Many Advantages of I.C.T In Agriculture or E-Agriculture, some of them are:
- E-Agriculture reduce the cost and time spent by the farmers in general.
- Modern machines and computer devices can automate the efforts of the farmers.
- E-Agriculture aids in facilitating easy transportation of farm goods.
- It brings about the application of synthetic fertilizers.
- It promotes better marketing and exposure of the product.
- It facilitates online trading and eCommerce.
- It reduces the impact on the ecosystem.
- It offers improved way of communicating between farmers and expert.
- It offers a way of providing and sharing technical advice to farmers with communication tools such as internet.
- It saves cost, time and energy.
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