The government has been popularising e-technology in the farm sector by launching several programmes to educate farmers about the latest know-how.

One of the initiatives is to develop web portals to build reservoir of data related to agriculture and development of web-enabled applications, official sources said.

Accordingly, 80 portals/websites/applications have been developed and are under various stages of implementation.

This includes DACNET, DAC websites, DACNET INTRADAC, SEEDNET, NHM, NFSM, RKVY and AGMARKENET, the sources added.

DAC (Department of Agriculture and Cooperative) is supporting e-governance activities in the state agriculture and allied departments through AGRISNET.

Funds under AGRISNET are provided to the states/UTs on the basis of specific project proposals submitted by them, the sources said, adding so far a sum of Rs 66.99 crore have been released to 23 states/UTs.

The ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) has provided e-connectivity to 192 Krishi Vigyan Kendras and 8 zonal project directorate to link them with technology generating institutions including ICAR institutes, Agricultural universities and other organisations.

In keeping with the government decision, DAC is working towards a National e-governance plan in agriculture (NeGP-A) with a view to promote focused and integrated implementation of e-governance activities in agriculture.

It has identified 12 clusters of priority services with numerous sub-services. The project has been approved by the Steering committee on NeGP-A.