ASSIGNMENT

ON
ROLE OF COMPUTERS IN LIVESTOCK DEVELOPMENT

Submitted to :

Submitted by :

Dr. B.H.M Patel

Dr. Jayant Goyal

Senior Scientist( SS )

P-1785

Division of Livestock Production and Managment

INDIAN VETERINARY RESEARCH INSTITUTE

IZATNAGAR - 243 122
2014

ROLE OF COMPUTERS IN LIVESTOCK DEVELOPMENT

INTRODUCTION
Livestock sector in India plays a pivotal role in upliftment of socio-economic and
employment generation for rural households. The contribution of agriculture and allied
sectors is about 14.20% of total GDP while livestock sector alone is contributing about 32%
of agriculture. The use of new Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has
revolutionized manufacturing and services the world over. The ICTs include community radio
and television, cellular-telephony, computers, digital imaging, the Internet and Wide Area
Networking (WAN), Wi-Fi and Mixed Media. In the more developed countries, the use of
ICT has become central to improve productivity in agriculture and livestock production
especially through its application in precision agriculture and livestock farming. It is of
developing effective information systems for planning and monitoring livestock development
programmes, improving livestock services and enabling learning for capacity development
that use ICT effectively and efficiently.
The contribution of livestock sector to Indias economy, livelihoods, food and
nutritional security and potential is very essential for further development. This would need
more robust planning and monitoring of the livestock sector, the need to make livestock
services upto International standards and build capacity across the sector to meet the
challenges of global competitiveness in animal production and marketing. Ultimately, India
will need to apply new ICTs effectively in improving these systems so that they support
meeting each of the above requirements for its livestock sector. The importance of livestock
goes beyond its food production function. It provides draft power and organic manure for
agriculture and fuel for domestic purpose. Growth in livestock sector is thus reckoned to
reduce interpersonal and inter regional inequalities, and alleviate poverty. Thus, ICT
initiatives will provide a strong case for effective coverage and dissemination of livestock
outreach information to the farming community.
Cyber Livestock Extension: Latest Tool of ICT
Cyber space is the imaginary or virtual space of computers connected with each other
on networks, across the globe. Thus computers can access information in the form of text,

graphic, audio, video and animation files. Software tools on networks provide facilities to
interactively access the information from connected servers (Sharma, 2000). Livestock
extension relates to the process of carrying the technology of scientific animal husbandry to
the livestock owner to enable him/her to utilize the information in making appropriate
decisions to improve the production of animals and thus improve his/her economy. Livestock
extension services seek to impart the necessary skills to the farmers for undertaking improved
animal husbandry operations, to make available timely information and improved practices in
an easily understandable form suited to their level of literacy and awareness and to create in
them a favourable attitude for innovation and change (Benor, 1984). Extension is the central
mechanism in the livestock development process, both in terms of technology transfer and
human resource development (Samanta, 1993). Cyber extension means using the power of
online networks, computer communications and digital interactive multimedia to facilitate
dissemination of animal husbandry technology.
Limitations of Traditional Livestock Extension Methods
1. Expensive: It costs a lot of money to produce and print extension materials and to train a
whole chain of livestock extension personnel.
2. Time Consuming: For a message to pass from a research station/university to the livestock
owners, it involves many actors to understand and deliver the message to next layer.
3. Message Distortion: A number of evaluation studies of Training and Visit system of
extension indicate that the quality of extension messages gets heavily distorted and eroded
when it ultimately reaches to the end users.
4. Poor Communication Capacity: There may be wide gap between the technologies
disseminated from the research laboratories and adopted at the level of end users.
5. Neglect of Technology Transfer in Livestock Production: Technology transfer is neglected
for livestock production and it can mainly be attributed to; (a) Transmission of information
for crop production has been a major priority for most extension services but not livestock
production although the demand for livestock products is growing more rapidly than the
demand for crops, (b) The focus of animal husbandry extension is on animal health rather
than production aspects. It is thus found that the capacity of traditional livestock extension
system is very limited and the challenges of reaching all the villages and the livestock owners
are becoming more and more difficult (Mathewman and Mortan, 1995).

Advantages of New Technology Transfer Method

1. Save Money and Time: Scientists can prepare and update electronic versions of messages,
FLDs and OFTs results themselves and load into computers which save money and time to
reach interested end users instantly.
2. Continuous Availability: The key attribute of cyber extension is its availability all the time
(24 hours). It can be uploaded at any time as and when required by the end users according to
their needs.
3. Cut Steps in the Diffusion Process: Cyber outreach will remove a number of steps
altogether from the traditional extension process. All the programmes can be eliminated
altogether. The information can be directly posted on the Internet, which will be available to
extension functionaries and farmers at district, Sub-division, block and village level. All the
concerned will get the information immediately and queries/clarification/improvement will
also be addressed equally fast without involving a chain of extension functionaries.
4. Information Rich and Interactive: It appeals to the interested extension workers and
analytical farmers and allows them to search and locate information they need.
5. Instant International Reach: Cyber extension method of technology transfer will eliminate
the time and distance barrier that get in the way of knowing the latest information on any
particular livestock problem from any part of the world and can be discussed with the best
scientist/expert in the field.
Harnessing ICT for livestock and rural development: Indian cases
There are cases of application of ICT that have made a difference in the delivery of
services in rural India. In the Warna Wired Village Project covering 70 villages in
Maharashtra, the existing cooperative structure has been used with state-of-the-art
infrastructure to provide Internet access to cooperative societies. The aim is to provide
information to the villagers by establishing networked booths in the villages. The Information
Villages Project of M.S Swaminathan Research Foundation is aimed at bringing the benefits
of modern ICTs to rural families in Pondichery. A value addition center, which is the hub of
the information network, has been established in Villianur village and four information shops
have been established in different villages to deliver a basket of services. In National Dairy
Development Board, ICT is being used at milk collection centers and in cooperatives to

measure butter fat content of milk, test the quality of the milk and promptly make the
payment to the farmers. It has resulted in the removal of incentives to those who adulterate
milk, reduced the time for payments from 10 days to less than 5 minutes and instilled the
confidence in farmers on cooperative set up. All these factors have helped the milk market to
expand to greater dimension (Sharma 2000). The Central Institute for Research on Goats
( CIRG) has developed E-mail Conference System for Goat Outreach on its goat-nic.in server
using free software called 'majordoma' which is available on www.greatcircle.com on a free
Linux

operating

system.

Three

e-mail

conferencing

systems,

viz., goat-

net@cirg.nic.in., livestock-net@cirg.nic.in andfishnet@cirg.nic.in , have been launched by

the institute to help information inflow among technologists, farmers, development officers
and planners (Singh and Radhika, 2002). Under Animal Health Project funded by Department
for International Development (DFID), Rajiv Gandhi college of Veterinary and Animal
Sciences, Pondicherry in collaboration with University of Reading, UK, has installed a
interactive touch screen information Kiosk in one of the peri-urban region of Pondicherry on
a trail basis. It has information on important cattle diseases in addition to management of
cattle and methods of acquiring information. Illiterate livestock keepers can access the
information with the touch of the screen which had text and pictures with sound back-up.
Relevance of cyber livestock outreach
How will ICT be useful to animal husbandry? Does it involve creating databases or
decision support systems? How can ICT then be made useful to farmers with smallholdings
of 1-2 animals? While deliberating on these issues at the World Science Academies summit,
Chennai in1996, it was mentioned that the information age has provided tools such as the
Internet and GIS mapping to promote a learning revolution in agriculture and allied activities
and outreach information should be disseminated through computer-aided information shops
(Kiosks) operated by educated village youth.
A large number of IT products and experiments are known in this area. Management
of cattle or poultry farms, covering layout of grasslands, feeding, nutrition, forage
management, breeding and waste disposal can now be carried out with the help of
hypermedia documents, decision support systems or even expert systems. Recent advances in
ICT based products provide livestock outreach with the opportunity to revise and update
delivery systems. Decision support systems furnish livestock outreach personnel, consultants,
allied industries and producers with a new resource to solve problems. Use of relational

databases on the livestock farm updated from external databases provides users with a new
option for problem solving. Hypertext and authoring languages create new ways to manage
more effectively the information available through database. Decision support systems using
an on-farm database, can be developed to address and to evaluate more specific livestock
management problems. Use of tools that can directly access and manipulate producers'
external and internal data increases the efficiency of the livestock outreach personnel.
Social consequences of slow adoption of ICT
ICT can be seen as contributing to the socio-cultural system of rural areas, with
impact on both behavior and knowledge. It is believed that ICT will become the prime basis
for the future economic development of livestock industry and failure to adopt could cause
major problems. The impact of ICT at the community level has a social dimension in which
access to information is uneven across the social groups. Information disadvantaged groups
are distanced from ICT networks, with the possibility of increased polarization (Gibbs and
Tanner 1997). It is believed that this polarization is inevitable, given the personal socioeconomic and cultural situation of Indian livestock farmers. The mitigation of this
marginalization is a major policy challenge. There is a need for local control over the local
information system and reduction in the social inequality of access.
Valantin (1996) observed that ICTs are key generative and transformative
technologies, which have positive and negative impacts on a range of social issues. This is
especially the case when some livestock groups in the population are connected to global
information facilities. The danger with low level of adoption of ICT is low social
participation, on the one level and social exclusion on the other (Thomas et al 2002). This
differentiation can lead to the creation of cosmopolitan and local livestock farmers. There is
therefore a need for rationality with regard to the adoption of ICT. Further, slow adoption of
ICT in livestock sector may lead to problems with other related sectors having higher
adoption rates and consequent fragmentation of the sector. This may happen at both regional
and national levels. For the livestock sector and farming communities, there will be external
and internal factors which are to be taken into account with the adoption of ICT.
External factors include visibility and openness of the policy process, the degree of
support for the idea or view point on the adoption of cyber extension, urgency in making a
decision, extent of consensus with regard to ICT and the involvement of outside interest
groups and their level of interest. Internal factors include the nature and level of interest

within the sector and farming communities to the adoption of ICT and the comprehensibility
of processes involved. This will involve the relationship of ICT to prevailing social values
and concerns. There will be both prudential acquiescence and as well as opposition by those
averse to the adoption of such technologies. In order to avoid this, policy-making bodies need
to plan the implementation of policies for the use of ICT, if maximum benefits are to be
achieved.
Silent revolution
A silent revolution is taking place in the communication systems in rural India.
Farmers are browsing the Internet and acquiring general, technical and marketing information
from the information kiosks. The total coverage under such initiatives may be very small
(about one thousand villages out of over six lakh villages in the country), but the potential of
ICT in bridging the so-called digital divide is being hotly debated within and outside the
country.
Livestock rearing continues to be the occupation and way of life for millions of the
population in India. The sustainable prosperity of these people is the key for improving the
overall human resource development scenario in the country. Livestock rearing in India
followed traditional lines until the beginning of Operation Flood in the 1970s. The white
revolution gave a boost to the production and productivity of livestock. Quick dissemination
of technological information from the livestock research system to end users and feedback to
the research stations are critical to the transfer of animal husbandry technology. The
information and communication support during the last 50 years has been conventional. The
extension personnel of the State Animal husbandry Departments disseminated the
technologies to the farmers manually by word of mouth. As a sequel the technologies have
not reached the majority of farmers due to vast geography and inherent limitations of the
traditional extension.
The gap between potential and existing production of livestock remains a challenge
even today. Reaching millions of farmers, spread over 600 districts, 5800 blocks and more
than 0.6 million villages is an almost impossible task. The diversity of agro-ecological
conditions adds to this challenge. The success of white revolution is mainly due to a
concerted homogenous livestock extension approach for the area of assured inputs. Now, as
we move to address the needs of rain fed ecosystems, wherein, livestock dominates the
agriculture and in the context of globalization and world trade agreement, the livestock

extension strategy becomes more complex. The needs of livestock keepers are much more
diverse and the knowledge required to address them is beyond the capacity of the livestock
extension functionaries working in traditional system.