ICT Development
ICT
for Agriculture in Sri Lanka
The agriculture sector in Sri Lanka employs 31.3% of the total
labor force of the country, but its contribution to the Gross Domestic
Production (GDP) is just 11.9% (Central Bank of Sri Lanka). So, basically one
third of the labor force is utilized to produce the just over ten percent of
the GDP.
This is just one side of the issue, but when we consider other issues related to this, such as large amount of government’s money spent on agriculture as subsidies (fertilizer subsidies, etc.) which can be invested on some other sector for better results, continuous poverty of rural people who are engaged in agriculture, etc. - it is clear that we have a issue of productivity within the agriculture sector and we need to address it immediately.
There are many factors (policy, legal framework, technology, knowledge, markets, research, etc.) to be considered while trying to improve the productivity of agriculture, but in all of them the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can definitely play a role of a catalyst.
Fortunately this has been understood, by the various stakeholders in the agriculture sector and as a result we can see many initiatives under the theme of ICT4 Agriculture today in Sri Lanka. As an attempt to bring all those different initiatives to one platform, Prof. Mangala De Zoysa (University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka) and some other likeminded people have organized the Sri Lanka’s first ever ICT4 Agriculture Conference (http://www.itfac.mrt.ac.lk/conference/), which is really a need of the hour.
This is just one side of the issue, but when we consider other issues related to this, such as large amount of government’s money spent on agriculture as subsidies (fertilizer subsidies, etc.) which can be invested on some other sector for better results, continuous poverty of rural people who are engaged in agriculture, etc. - it is clear that we have a issue of productivity within the agriculture sector and we need to address it immediately.
There are many factors (policy, legal framework, technology, knowledge, markets, research, etc.) to be considered while trying to improve the productivity of agriculture, but in all of them the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can definitely play a role of a catalyst.
Fortunately this has been understood, by the various stakeholders in the agriculture sector and as a result we can see many initiatives under the theme of ICT4 Agriculture today in Sri Lanka. As an attempt to bring all those different initiatives to one platform, Prof. Mangala De Zoysa (University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka) and some other likeminded people have organized the Sri Lanka’s first ever ICT4 Agriculture Conference (http://www.itfac.mrt.ac.lk/conference/), which is really a need of the hour.
Source: http://ict4d-in-srilanka.blogspot.com/
Comments