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The majority of the rural population of India is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. With rural employment being concentrated in small firms, opportunities for young people to undergo training or to upgrade their skills are limited.
To tackle the issue of unemployment among rural youth, The National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR) and Syngenta Foundation India (SFI) are going to start an Agri-Entrepreneurship (AE), model. This model will focus on improving the plight of farmers in rural India.
The programme is currently ongoing across seven states and is going to be scaled up to different parts of the country.
Key Features
The Agri-Entrepreneur (AE) Enterprise platform is aiming to optimize all processes, from the selection of an AE leading up to their day-to-day business activities and farmer interactions.
It will lead to faster scaling up, adding greater transparency and facilitating the creation of networks for seamless knowledge transfer.
Talking about the Agri Entrepreneurs, Dr. W.R. Reddy IAS, Director General NIRD&PR said, "Farmers across the country at present need commodity-centric experts in the form of service providers who could bring in knowledge related to crop science, input services, value addition and market linkages as a one-stop solution to the farmer."
Digitization in agriculture
The agricultural communities across the country are experiencing difficulties. To improve this condition, it is necessary to build strategies for achieving productivity, value addition, and market linkages.
The Digital Platform serves as a tool for providing personalized digital extension services to the farmer. Based on principles of micro-learning, the content is created in-house and validated by agriculture experts. Currently, the content for the advisory is available in 5 local languages. Kuza technologies are the technology partner to this initiative and offer integrated technology solution for every stage of AE model from a selection of AEs to impact assessment of the initiative.
Towards a progressive future
The AE initiative is grooming small farmers into well-trained and progressive farmers. They are empowered with the technical know-how to increase yields, reduce costs, and turn agriculture into profitable enterprises. It has also led to youth being gainfully self-employed and being accorded the opportunity to participate in rural development.
