SHILLONG: On 29th December, Chief Minister of Meghalaya, Dr. Mukul M Sangma, launched the 1917 Integrated Technology Enabled Agri Management System (1917iTEAMS), a groundbreaking initiative of the Department of Agriculture, Government of Meghalaya. This initiative aimed at easing and enabling access to remunerative markets, information, crop advisories and agriculture related services for farmers, buyers, sellers and entrepreneurs of the state.
The Chief Minister said, “The programme is a beautiful concept designed and conceptualised to empower our farmers and farming will no longer be the same again.”
Chief minister, Dr Mukul M Sangma said that the inauguration was a great moment for the government to empower the most important sections of the society, the farmers, who take care of the food and nutritional security and people who are often not attended to in a manner as they deserved.
The Chief Minister informed, “This is one of the concepts of multiple interventions and is formatted in a manner that can provide comprehensive services to farmers with a broad spectrum solutions available to the farmers using the advantage of technology and integrating the emerging changes in market behavior.”
Dr Sangma also added that the government has come up with a comprehensive Agriculture management plan called CAMP and under which number of interventions are conceptualized.
The 1917iTEAMS is a first of its kind in the country, disruptive farmer centric and market oriented technology service that will offer affordable transportation, evacuation and logistics services to farmers and facilitate them to access markets, buyers and sellers of their choice through a cloud based technology driven center called the Agri Response Center (ARC) set up by the Department in the top floor of the new District Agriculture Office complex, Laitumkhrah, Shillong and linked, through the cloud, to a fleet of dedicated Agri Response Vehicles (ARV) spread out across the state.
Unlike other online trading platforms, the 1917iTEAMS platform is not a place where trade or buying and selling will happen. It is simply a cloud based level playing field where buyer and sellers are made aware of each other’s needs and prices and decide on whom to shake hands with. Once the deal is done the farmer / buyer places the call to the ARC on the toll free 1917 number for lifting and transportation of the produce.
Source:http://www.theshillongtimes.com/
