The Role of IT in Agriculture

As a rapidly developing country we should now concentrate on how to merge modern

technology with the development of Sri Lanka. Information Technology is a main stream that
the modern world is paying more attention throughout past years. As we all know it is a familiar
subject in many fields like engineering, medicine, business and management. But the problem
is that many people do not know how much help we could get from IT to enhance the
agricultural sector, where more than 65% of the population in this country is engaged in.

Agriculture is linked with Sri Lanka’s cultural heritage

from the times of our ancient Kings. Therefore it has
become the backbone of the Sri Lankan economy. On
the other hand, Information Technology is the
technology that is helping to exchange information
between each other. And we clearly know, in any
sector “information” is the key for its development.
Relevant and correct information provided with right
timing would be a great help to any sector. Agriculture is not an exception to it. So why can’t
we merge these two together to build up the agriculture in Sri Lanka which is being
destructed for many decades?

What are the things we can do with the help of IT?

 Select the most suitable crop to your land.

 Select suitable fertilizers.
 Find suitable quantities of those fertilizers.
 Find the agricultural centers where you can buy those crops and fertilizers.
 Learn and develop your harvesting and post harvesting technologies.
 Share the knowledge and technologies with other farmers.
 Learn about new pests, diseases or threats to your crop.
 Find out how to protect your crop from those.
 Find out upcoming weather reports.
 New market changes.
 Buying and selling prices of each type of crop.

These are some simple things and there are many more.
As you can see it will help to take timely actions, prepare strategies for next season, speculate
the market changes and also to avoid being fooled by intermediate buyers and other
unfavorable circumstances. The traditional methods which provide that information to the end
users (i.e. farmers) is very inefficient, untimed and also communication is one way only.

If we go into deep, in the international context, there are much developed countries that use IT
to their farming. For example, Japan, United States of America, etc. In large scale farming, Sri
Lanka can also use some new technologies which are already using throughout in the world.

Look at the following examples that use IT in farming.

Field server, Wireless LAN Autonomous Field Monitoring System

Plant Condition Diagnosis System

 Web Marketing with Remote Camera

Source: Successful Information Technology (It) for Agriculture and Rural Development, Seishi
Ninomiya, National Agricultural Research Center, National Agricultural Research Organization
Kannondai, Tsukuba, Ibarak, Japan.