Farmers in Karnataka can now get their doubts cleared by experts in the Agriculture Department.
They need to send their queries through the department’s website, which has been redesigned in a bid to turn it into an interactive platform. The farmers will get reply from the experts through SMS also.
Minister of State for Agriculture Krishna Byre Gowda, who launched the website on Monday, said facilities would soon be provided to help farmers upload photos of pest attack or crop devastation so that experts could diagnose the problem and get back to them with solutions.
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He said plans were afoot to share the best practices and innovations of enterprising farmers through the website so that others too could emulate them. The intention behind the redesigning exercise was to create a farmer-to-farmer communication platform through the Agriculture Department, he said.
“Most of the times, farmers have better solutions for the problems through their experience. This website encourages them to share such knowledge with others,” he said.
Mr. Gowda said information related to weather bulletin, pest warning, price situation, tenders and various schemes of the Agriculture Department would also be disseminated through the website. He asked the department to put the proceedings of important meetings on the website in a bid to bring about transparency in administration.
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This would also serve as a grievance-redressing mechanism as farmers could also send in their queries on administration and delivery of various services through this bilingual website which operates in Kannada and English. The address of the redesigned website is: raitamitra.kar.nic.in.