Kindly find some basic concepts attached for VKVK logo, KVKnet and a few explorations for agropedia. These are basic concepts and I have not numbered them for approval as yet. But thought would be useful to get your comments to further refine my directions.

 

There are few questions to agropedia technical team:

1. How far Drupal is graphics friendly? Can it handle transparency, image background, image treatment as the attached files have (agropedia home page)?

2. Could we create a html page as the agropedia home page and link it with the Drupal framework?

 

And a very important question for everybody:

1.     Are all the information on the agropedia home page, equally important? could some of them move to other pages? What if we consider primary, secondary and tertiary information, what from the home page could come under these three categories (for an example, statistics, how important is it for the user? if it is primarily for us, as it has been for the time being, it does not need to be there on the first page),

2.     What would be a hierarchical structure of the entire agropedia? Right now it seems all the information are equally important and that actually becomes an issue in the interface. Is agrotag a news in agropedia, or is it a part of the site? Or is an external linkage? Is it still necessary to have "about agropedia..." on the home page? or could it be in "about us/ something similar"?

3.     Coulde structure the agropedia along similar lines of information hierarchy? New releases also has video help, is it the same as video assistance? if not, could we think of other word to term it?

4.     Would it be critical to look at this from the perspective of interface, as well as the "look" of it.

 

 

1.  Is this logo or design structure, which will be show cased some where?

 2. Is this the basis for internal consumption to understand?

3. You question #2- info hierarchy - i think the basic principal which would be applied is the number of hits,even if some thing is basic and is getting maximum hits, should be right on top.
For instance , i was going thru the agropedia usage pattern, strangely the most complex scientific concepts, had as low hits as 500 compared to some basic stuff.
Basically our plan is to design a user-driven basis of hierarchy in which to rank the contents.

Well the logos are for the KVKne and VKVK. But the information bit certainly is for agropedia. I completely agree with you as far as the interface is concerned, and yes it must be user driven. But that's where perhaps the dilemma arises. What does the user want? and how do we render it the best with prioritizing the information? and that's where perhaps also the "show window" comes into picture...how does it reflect whats in the store?

 

One of the concerns we do have is the lack of images used, e.g, http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/theagropedia/?q=forum, at this level the user perhaps has seen a bit of agropedia and either has decided to participate or is looking for specific information; now my question is: is she still looking at the user log in, or the user of the week, or the statistics? If she is, then has she already learnt that these are there, and has the ability to look for them? in that case could they be a little less important or the log in is made contextual (like the text on the table "Login to post new content in the forum."  becomes a link to a log in window)?

 

Another example: http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/theagropedia/?q=content/crop-calendar, here the most dominating text is "Add content" because of its size and a very visible position, but without logging in, the link takes you to a page saying "access denied". Do we clarify this link further and say "to add content, log in as user"?

 

Everything is there, but I guess we need to take a re-look at it saying well these are the entry points, and these are the exits, this is where you could contribute. the third part would be to create a language that is common in terms of branding (I mean to say the look and the treatment of the main pages, secondary pages and tertiary pages, depending upon ho deep are we in the information.

 

Well I have been going through the site again and again and these are the points I am trying to seek answer for so that a "homogeneity" could be built in while redesigning the layouts.

 

 

1. Can we create something called a " hot content" just to attract and keep posting whats the latest.

2. again- 6000 users is definitely not a benchmark to create something, but yes a reference point, given the users and existing TG.

3. If we look at the basic theory of web browsing: where in : 1. i search on certain key contents say wheat 2. 100s of wheat related info comes, 3. i narrow the search again " wheat germ psalm India" then again we get to more pointed answers, then when we click on the particular page, this thing called" wheat Germ etc" would be in some loop and the user would have to keep clicking , till he gets to the right answer.

4. IF we look at the way wiki is structured, it has those 10 topics and then latest , picture, this week that year, etc etc. so for a regular user , its a quick glance to whats latest, and then i put a search , and get to my topic. simply put, if we let the user search what he wants, ( this is  kind of contradicting my statement of putting hot topics, with maximum hits) , the website can be basic and everything else is search depended.

5. Further, like how google does those doodles, similarly , the search place can have things which can represent a latest, research invention or a scientists birthday ( famous) etc.

Point i think i am trying to make : Let the entire things be in the back, the front page is a simple thing, and let the user keep digging what he wants. that way , it saves a lot of trouble to trying to figure out whats the best thing to put on top etc

This is going to be most useful for a non-tethered agropedia - i.e. when it does

become independent and public domain and philanthropically funded (with socialist

characteristics, naturally!).

 

You all have a communications discipline devoted to web-based representations of

knowledge and information, which I know next to nothing about. However, this may be

worth a thought - it's been probably 6-7 years since Reuters introduced 'news-ml'

which is an xml for news, ergo, for organising short pieces of information that

change rapidly and depend on reusable elements for continuity. I have no idea about

the science behind news-ml but have at several times thought it will be good for

agropedia - especially when TVP has discussed agrovoc and the localisations of

agrovoc. Just think of the possibilities if we had an agri-ml that lent its strength

to district-level GIS!

 

the 'active' cloud from the economist is seen in better detail at

http://infomous.com/site/economist/ and calls to mind the cmap-based knowledge

models TVP and team developed. I think this is a very useful idea thread to follow.

 

 

 

 

As far as these technical issues are concern, our view is: For point 1: Drupal can handle things like image background and attachmentquite well, but we haven't work with transparency much. All I know is thecurrent agropedia logo is a transparent image. For point 2: Yes, we can have a different html/php page and link it withdrupal running theme (http://drupal.org/project/front). Though we haven'ttried this sort of stuff before but it seems to be doable.

paras on Agriculture and Food from the President’s address to Parliament should  followed

1.     happy that my Government’s continued emphasis on Agriculture has yielded fruit. The agricultural sector has grown at 6.6 per cent during 2010-11, the highest growth rate recorded in recent times. The country witnessed a record production of241.56 million tonnes of food grains during 2010-11. We have achieved record production of fruits and vegetables at 231 million tonnes, pulses at 18 million tonnes, oilseeds at 31.1 million tonnes, and cotton at 33.42 million bales. My Government incentivized public investment in agriculture through its flagship programmes like the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, the National Food Security Mission and the National Horticulture Mission. The pro-farmer price support policy of my Government of the last 7 years is being continued. During the year 2011-12 the minimum support prices of selected agricultural commodities were raised by 10 to 40 per cent over the previous year.

2.     Credit to agriculture reached about ? 4,60,000 crore in 2010-11 which is 22 percent above the target. I am confident that the 2011-12 target of ? 4,75,000 crore will be achieved. An interest subvention scheme was implemented to ensure the availability of crop loans to small farmers for loans up to ? 3 lakh at the rate of 7 per cent per annum. An additional subvention of 3 per cent is being provided to such farmers who repay their short-term crop loan in time, reducing their effective interest rate to 4 per cent.

3.      My Government will take steps to reduce the gap of about 10 million hectare between the irrigation potential created and the irrigation potential utilized by strengthening the Command Area Development Programme and merging it with the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme. The National Water Mission will be implemented with focus on improving water use efficiency by 20 per cent in five years. My Government will make efforts to realize the farming potential of rain-fed and dry land areas by ensuring healthy participation by all stakeholders and convergence of various Government sponsored programmes.

4.     Availability of all subsidized fertilizers has been ensured as per the requirements during the year. The Ministry is working on a comprehensive fertilizer monitoring system which would present information on fertilizer availability to the farmers through SMS, internet and telephone. My Government has decided to revive eight urea units of Fertilizer Corporation of India and Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation to create an extra installed capacity of 9 million tonnes of urea. We are aiming to achieve self-sufficiency in urea production in the next five years.

5.     As I had announced in my address to the Parliament in June, 2009, my Government has introduced The National Food Security Bill in the Lok Sabha in the last winter session. This will provide the statutory framework for assuring food security. My Government is simultaneously working with the State Governments towards complete computerization of the Public Distribution System.

 

Only I can say is if only what she said was right. Giving credit is

not a solution if it was we would not have 2.5 Lak farmer commiting

sucide.the credit is going directly to the input providers like seed

cos fertilizer n pest companies.

Agriculture is a dying stroy in our country ~thats hard fact.

 

Quite true. The Pres, being from Maharashtra, ought to have known better -

However, for Agropedia readers it will be a good reference. As we get to the point where they discuss the environmental economics of cultivation, statements like this will help them gauge what govt sees and what they actually experience.

So - we should have that 'policy' section running on Agropedia. This is where it

should go, with appropriate bells and whistles.

 

Yes infact, what sankara has sent, can be part of that .Points to note:

 

1.     We can also link up all the important agriculture related links etc ,

which will hook up to the respective govt policy links.like mopfi,

apeda, etc.

 

2.     further, we need to create a section called markets, which will pull

information from various market sources like:

Agmarknet, commodity exchanges ( domestic & international ) , this will

help.

3.     what i would like to see the portal is a one stop shop, so anything and everything on agriculture will be there itself.

4.     maybe we should create a search engine like the google, which can be a default engine in the browser- like how we have google today- which will throw up everything about agriculture and also keep putting the agropedia content (TVP) your views please.

 

5.     also , request all to have an ID, though requesting for new password would be preferable.

 

6.     so if we all can use it and keep adding on to this page, am sure, there will be a lot of things which will emerge. lets just put our ideas, without striking it down or debating about it right now.then maybe once we have the dox ready say in next ten days, and based on our user expereince as commoners, we can sit and debate and make a poa accordingly.

 Can we start a wiki page called agropedia - the way forward - and can we

start putting all these ideas into it, flesh them out, debate about

them, etc. so that we have it all documented in some place?  Amrita,

will you please start the skeleton wiki page and share the link with all

by Monday?

 

 

1.     Happy to hear about the interest in prices and mandis - an oldish topic for some of us as we had some ambitious ideas about this over two years ago, which were deflated by ICAR's myopia.

2.     The crop science community that Agropedia is supposed to be for will do nothing useful for it - this is certain for the psychologies of the NARS is well-known.Those who are connected in one way or another to cultivation and food will.So - the new wiki section is a good idea to serve as a bin for these ways forward.

3.     What we really really need is some kind of spider, a linguistically ambitious 'makri', which can find non-English news reports from a set of say 30 sources we give it, and use Agropedia's semantic tech so that 'makri' can spin the connections between prices, policy and crops.

4.     To Sankara: thanks much for the SIA 2011-12. Heaps of useful data in the annexures

      - a look at the fertiliser consumption is hair-raising - and you'll      

      noted that the Pres made special mention of the ferti units to be

      revived. Now we wait for the lords of potash to set up their own

      commodity exchange.

 

5.      A query for the tech group

in Agropedia - can your OCR black box gobble up this file and spit out tables for Agropedia users?

6.     Fertilizer abuse is a hard fact, for instance RCF is second largest

ferti unit in the country- says 80% of its sale happen in three crop;

wheat,cotton, sugar. so effectively two commercial rather three

commercial crops practically take up the entire 80-90% of the govt.

subsidy on fertilizers.

 

7.     Couple of years back in 07, punjab govt. was dissuading farmers to grow wheat, because the land was filled with fertilizers and yeilds had dropped dramatically.

 

8.     If you look at the costs of the farmers, major components ( we had done

a study on this);

a.        Inputs ( fertilizer,seeds,pestcides)

b.        Waters &  electricity

 

So now, if you give hime a dole ( loan wavier), where is he spending on

buying higher inputs, costs of which have gone up. now compared to this

look at the output prices.

he still is struggling to get a resonable price for say a potato,

tomato, or any crop.

 

however, who is making the money- the intermediaries, traders and the

manufacturing cos.

 

So for his input costs- he borrows, when the time to sell comes, he is

unable to get the expected price. so he does into debt- for waving off

loan, where does the money come - from tax payers. so effectively each

of us are paying to those seed companies who in the name of technology

continue to raise prices, push for more inputs- as thats what the modern

or scientific technology is preaching. Please note, we are living in

world of volumes ie, everything is driven by volumes. In fact if you

look at modern medicine, one needs to take at lest 3-4 pills to get our

of a common cold.  So these are times of VOLUMEs.

 

The objective is clear, if we continue to

ignore then one day we will be forced to use bio tech, in the name of

raising productivity yield etc. as if you notice, as per FAO by 2050,

there would be 2 bln additional population which would be needed to be

fed. where will this come from. Even in india, ifyou look each year we

are adding about 11 mio new mouths, which are ready to take a bite of a

roti, where is the production going to come from?

 

So eventually over next few years, we will move to bio tech food 100%,

the ground for which is being prepared right now.

 

9.     one more thing, can we have a section which

will talk about natural farming/organic farming etc- am sure ICAR would

hate it , but why not.

 

A rapid summary of costs and subventions is correct.

 

1.     Last year with inputs from the Kisan Swaraj group I had done a small cost of cultivation balancing - none of the useless C2 C3 rubbish the Plan Comm likes and which the economists can't get rid of.It showed how impossible the MSPs were based on what cultivating families actually incurred. In contrast, some organic produce farmers who have maintained balancesheets have shown that removing the high-input costs (the chemical stuff the fertiliser, seed and biotech companies push) makes a 1 hectare plot an earning plot.

2.     The Plan Comm / Min Agri / CACP / DARE cost of cultivation is a devious tool designed to ensure circuitous cash flow to the same high-input industry sectors.

 An article from Development: Greening the Economy, Volume 55, Number 1,

March 2012 would help.

Ravishankar casts his vote

 

liked the number 9

great stuff- like the look and feel of it, instead of grey scales, how

about giving the green shades- its agree, also can we link in the google

maps into it, so that, once the location of the user is locked,

immediately a map shows where he is located, just a thought.

 

Kindly find the attached options for VKVK logo. Its a mix bag, some already

sent earlier and some new. To help the selection I have numbered them, as

well as put a little comment against each of them explaining what inspired

the visuals.

 

The selection of the VKVK logo would be crucial as based on this the KVKnet

logo and the web page layouts need to be refined and fine tuned. So could

we have a quick vote on this? Also if you dont like any, let me know your

best choice and perhaps the direction in which you would like it.

 

 

Rahul votes:

My three votes are for:

3 and 4 in file vkv02 and 4 in vkv01 - and preference order is the same.

 

Ravishankar casts his votes:

3 & 4

 

Koyel’s votes:

 

vKVK 01- 4

 

vKVK 02- 2 and 5

 

agrotagger- 9 and 10

 

Debaleena votes:

 

vKVK 01: 5 and 7

vKVK 02: 5

agrotagger: 5

 

 

 

Just an idea.........I felt very strongly about the words

VIRTUAL in vKVK. Could you please make up something in the logo to signify

the virtual networking element in vKVK?

from the ones you have conjured.

 

Amrita’s votes

vKVK 01- 6 & 7

vKVK 02- 3 & 6

agrotagger logos......votes for  3, 5 and 9.

 

 Runa Sarkar casts the votes:

 

#9  followed by #6 for agrotagger

and

#3 followed by #4 of VKVK01.pdf for VKVK

 

 

 

IIT,K’s votes:

 

   - VKVK01: 3 followed by 5 followed by 7

   - VKVK02: 6 followed by 4 followed by 5

   - Agrotagger: 8 followed by 7 followed by 10 (But with this logo we have

   a suggestion, as you have used a bar code style in logo no. 10 instead

   we can have a agrotagger *QR code* appended or embedded with

   "agrotagger")

 

Interfaces for KVKnet are also very nice. We will soon start working on

them.

 

The agropedia UI which you have send earlier (there were 3 of them-

all different style) which are not yet finalized.

Can that be also discussed here, so that we have a final face for

agropedia.net as well.

 

A couple of things:

 

1. Ravi, if you kindly mention which file have you selected the logos from

for VKVK (001 or 002?)

 

2. Meeta: Thanks for the suggestion on the QR code, will be done. As far as

agropedia interface is concerned, I will work on it as soon as I finish

KVK, VKVK and agrotagger. PLEASE DO NOT GO BY THE ONES THAT I HAD SENT YOU EARLIER.

 Kuntal votes:

5 and 6 get my vote

 

And 6 and 7 in VKVK02

 

 

Rahul laments the absence of TVP’s votes..........the father did not vote!

So 3 ballots are yet to be dropped

 ________________________________________________

 

Kindly find some basic concepts attached for VKVK logo, KVKnet and a few explorations for agropedia. These are basic concepts and I have not numbered them for approval as yet. But thought would be useful to get your comments to further refine my directions.

 

There are few questions to agropedia technical team:

1. How far Drupal is graphics friendly? Can it handle transparency, image background, image treatment as the attached files have (agropedia home page)?

2. Could we create a html page as the agropedia home page and link it with the Drupal framework?

 

And a very important question for everybody:

1.     Are all the information on the agropedia home page, equally important? could some of them move to other pages? What if we consider primary, secondary and tertiary information, what from the home page could come under these three categories (for an example, statistics, how important is it for the user? if it is primarily for us, as it has been for the time being, it does not need to be there on the first page),

2.     What would be a hierarchical structure of the entire agropedia? Right now it seems all the information are equally important and that actually becomes an issue in the interface. Is agrotag a news in agropedia, or is it a part of the site? Or is an external linkage? Is it still necessary to have "about agropedia..." on the home page? or could it be in "about us/ something similar"?

3.     Coulde structure the agropedia along similar lines of information hierarchy? New releases also has video help, is it the same as video assistance? if not, could we think of other word to term it?

4.     Would it be critical to look at this from the perspective of interface, as well as the "look" of it.

 

 1.  Is this logo or design structure, which will be show cased some where?

 2. Is this the basis for internal consumption to understand?

3. You question #2- info hierarchy - i think the basic principal which would be applied is the number of hits,even if some thing is basic and is getting maximum hits, should be right on top.
For instance , i was going thru the agropedia usage pattern, strangely the most complex scientific concepts, had as low hits as 500 compared to some basic stuff.
Basically our plan is to design a user-driven basis of hierarchy in which to rank the contents.

Well the logos are for the KVKne and VKVK. But the information bit certainly is for agropedia. I completely agree with you as far as the interface is concerned, and yes it must be user driven. But that's where perhaps the dilemma arises. What does the user want? and how do we render it the best with prioritizing the information? and that's where perhaps also the "show window" comes into picture...how does it reflect whats in the store?

 

One of the concerns we do have is the lack of images used, e.g, http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/theagropedia/?q=forum, at this level the user perhaps has seen a bit of agropedia and either has decided to participate or is looking for specific information; now my question is: is she still looking at the user log in, or the user of the week, or the statistics? If she is, then has she already learnt that these are there, and has the ability to look for them? in that case could they be a little less important or the log in is made contextual (like the text on the table "Login to post new content in the forum."  becomes a link to a log in window)?

 

Another example: http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/theagropedia/?q=content/crop-calendar, here the most dominating text is "Add content" because of its size and a very visible position, but without logging in, the link takes you to a page saying "access denied". Do we clarify this link further and say "to add content, log in as user"?

 

Everything is there, but I guess we need to take a re-look at it saying well these are the entry points, and these are the exits, this is where you could contribute. the third part would be to create a language that is common in terms of branding (I mean to say the look and the treatment of the main pages, secondary pages and tertiary pages, depending upon ho deep are we in the information.

 

Well I have been going through the site again and again and these are the points I am trying to seek answer for so that a "homogeneity" could be built in while redesigning the layouts.

 1. Can we create something called a " hot content" just to attract and keep posting whats the latest.

2. again- 6000 users is definitely not a benchmark to create something, but yes a reference point, given the users and existing TG.

3. If we look at the basic theory of web browsing: where in : 1. i search on certain key contents say wheat 2. 100s of wheat related info comes, 3. i narrow the search again " wheat germ psalm India" then again we get to more pointed answers, then when we click on the particular page, this thing called" wheat Germ etc" would be in some loop and the user would have to keep clicking , till he gets to the right answer.

4. IF we look at the way wiki is structured, it has those 10 topics and then latest , picture, this week that year, etc etc. so for a regular user , its a quick glance to whats latest, and then i put a search , and get to my topic. simply put, if we let the user search what he wants, ( this is  kind of contradicting my statement of putting hot topics, with maximum hits) , the website can be basic and everything else is search depended.

5. Further, like how google does those doodles, similarly , the search place can have things which can represent a latest, research invention or a scientists birthday ( famous) etc.

Point i think i am trying to make : Let the entire things be in the back, the front page is a simple thing, and let the user keep digging what he wants. that way , it saves a lot of trouble to trying to figure out whats the best thing to put on top etc

This is going to be most useful for a non-tethered agropedia - i.e. when it does

become independent and public domain and philanthropically funded (with socialistcharacteristics, naturally!). You all have a communications discipline devoted to web-based representations ofknowledge and information, which I know next to nothing about. However, this may beworth a thought - it's been probably 6-7 years since Reuters introduced 'news-ml'which is an xml for news, ergo, for organising short pieces of information thatchange rapidly and depend on reusable elements for continuity. I have no idea aboutthe science behind news-ml but have at several times thought it will be good foragropedia - especially when TVP has discussed agrovoc and the localisations ofagrovoc. Just think of the possibilities if we had an agri-ml that lent its strengthto district-level GIS! the 'active' cloud from the economist is seen in better detail athttp://infomous.com/site/economist/ and calls to mind the cmap-based knowledgemodels TVP and team developed. I think this is a very useful idea thread to follow. 

   

As far as these technical issues are concern, our view is: For point 1: Drupal can handle things like image background and attachmentquite well, but we haven't work with transparency much. All I know is thecurrent agropedia logo is a transparent image. For point 2: Yes, we can have a different html/php page and link it withdrupal running theme (http://drupal.org/project/front). Though we haven'ttried this sort of stuff before but it seems to be doable.

               

Relevant paras on Agriculture and Food from the President’s address to Parliament should  followed

1.     happy that my Government’s continued emphasis on Agriculture has yielded fruit. The agricultural sector has grown at 6.6 per cent during 2010-11, the highest growth rate recorded in recent times. The country witnessed a record production of241.56 million tonnes of food grains during 2010-11. We have achieved record production of fruits and vegetables at 231 million tonnes, pulses at 18 million tonnes, oilseeds at 31.1 million tonnes, and cotton at 33.42 million bales. My Government incentivized public investment in agriculture through its flagship programmes like the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, the National Food Security Mission and the National Horticulture Mission. The pro-farmer price support policy of my Government of the last 7 years is being continued. During the year 2011-12 the minimum support prices of selected agricultural commodities were raised by 10 to 40 per cent over the previous year. 2.     Credit to agriculture reached about ? 4,60,000 crore in 2010-11 which is 22 percent above the target. I am confident that the 2011-12 target of ? 4,75,000 crore will be achieved. An interest subvention scheme was implemented to ensure the availability of crop loans to small farmers for loans up to ? 3 lakh at the rate of 7 per cent per annum. An additional subvention of 3 per cent is being provided to such farmers who repay their short-term crop loan in time, reducing their effective interest rate to 4 per cent.3.      My Government will take steps to reduce the gap of about 10 million hectare between the irrigation potential created and the irrigation potential utilized by strengthening the Command Area Development Programme and merging it with the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme. The National Water Mission will be implemented with focus on improving water use efficiency by 20 per cent in five years. My Government will make efforts to realize the farming potential of rain-fed and dry land areas by ensuring healthy participation by all stakeholders and convergence of various Government sponsored programmes.4.     Availability of all subsidized fertilizers has been ensured as per the requirements during the year. The Ministry is working on a comprehensive fertilizer monitoring system which would present information on fertilizer availability to the farmers through SMS, internet and telephone. My Government has decided to revive eight urea units of Fertilizer Corporation of India and Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation to create an extra installed capacity of 9 million tonnes of urea. We are aiming to achieve self-sufficiency in urea production in the next five years.5.     As I had announced in my address to the Parliament in June, 2009, my Government has introduced The National Food Security Bill in the Lok Sabha in the last winter session. This will provide the statutory framework for assuring food security. My Government is simultaneously working with the State Governments towards complete computerization of the Public Distribution System.  

Only I can say is if only what she said was right. Giving credit is

not a solution if it was we would not have 2.5 Lak farmer commiting

sucide.the credit is going directly to the input providers like seed

cos fertilizer n pest companies.

Agriculture is a dying stroy in our country ~thats hard fact.

  

Quite true. The Pres, being from Maharashtra, ought to have known better -

However, for Agropedia readers it will be a good reference. As we get to the point where they discuss the environmental economics of cultivation, statements like this will help them gauge what govt sees and what they actually experience.

So - we should have that 'policy' section running on Agropedia. This is where it

should go, with appropriate bells and whistles.

 

 

Yes infact, what sankara has sent, can be part of that .Points to note:

 

1.     We can also link up all the important agriculture related links etc ,

which will hook up to the respective govt policy links.like mopfi,

apeda, etc.

 

2.     further, we need to create a section called markets, which will pull

information from various market sources like:

Agmarknet, commodity exchanges ( domestic & international ) , this will

help.

3.     what i would like to see the portal is a one stop shop, so anything and everything on agriculture will be there itself.

4.     maybe we should create a search engine like the google, which can be a default engine in the browser- like how we have google today- which will throw up everything about agriculture and also keep putting the agropedia content (TVP) your views please.

 

5.     also , request all to have an ID, though requesting for new password would be preferable.

 

6.     so if we all can use it and keep adding on to this page, am sure, there will be a lot of things which will emerge. lets just put our ideas, without striking it down or debating about it right now.then maybe once we have the dox ready say in next ten days, and based on our user expereince as commoners, we can sit and debate and make a poa accordingly.

 Can we start a wiki page called agropedia - the way forward - and can we

start putting all these ideas into it, flesh them out, debate about

them, etc. so that we have it all documented in some place?  Amrita,

will you please start the skeleton wiki page and share the link with all

by Monday?

 

 

1.     Happy to hear about the interest in prices and mandis - an oldish topic for some of us as we had some ambitious ideas about this over two years ago, which were deflated by ICAR's myopia.

2.     The crop science community that Agropedia is supposed to be for will do nothing useful for it - this is certain for the psychologies of the NARS is well-known.Those who are connected in one way or another to cultivation and food will.So - the new wiki section is a good idea to serve as a bin for these ways forward.

3.     What we really really need is some kind of spider, a linguistically ambitious 'makri', which can find non-English news reports from a set of say 30 sources we give it, and use Agropedia's semantic tech so that 'makri' can spin the connections between prices, policy and crops.

4.     To Sankara: thanks much for the SIA 2011-12. Heaps of useful data in the annexures

      - a look at the fertiliser consumption is hair-raising - and you'll      

      noted that the Pres made special mention of the ferti units to be

      revived. Now we wait for the lords of potash to set up their own

      commodity exchange.

 

5.      A query for the tech group

in Agropedia - can your OCR black box gobble up this file and spit out tables for Agropedia users?

6.     Fertilizer abuse is a hard fact, for instance RCF is second largest

ferti unit in the country- says 80% of its sale happen in three crop;

wheat,cotton, sugar. so effectively two commercial rather three

commercial crops practically take up the entire 80-90% of the govt.

subsidy on fertilizers.

 

7.     Couple of years back in 07, punjab govt. was dissuading farmers to grow wheat, because the land was filled with fertilizers and yeilds had dropped dramatically.

 

8.     If you look at the costs of the farmers, major components ( we had done

a study on this);

a.        Inputs ( fertilizer,seeds,pestcides)

b.        Waters &  electricity

 

So now, if you give hime a dole ( loan wavier), where is he spending on

buying higher inputs, costs of which have gone up. now compared to this

look at the output prices.

he still is struggling to get a resonable price for say a potato,

tomato, or any crop.

 

however, who is making the money- the intermediaries, traders and the

manufacturing cos.

 

So for his input costs- he borrows, when the time to sell comes, he is

unable to get the expected price. so he does into debt- for waving off

loan, where does the money come - from tax payers. so effectively each

of us are paying to those seed companies who in the name of technology

continue to raise prices, push for more inputs- as thats what the modern

or scientific technology is preaching. Please note, we are living in

world of volumes ie, everything is driven by volumes. In fact if you

look at modern medicine, one needs to take at lest 3-4 pills to get our

of a common cold.  So these are times of VOLUMEs.

 

The objective is clear, if we continue to

ignore then one day we will be forced to use bio tech, in the name of

raising productivity yield etc. as if you notice, as per FAO by 2050,

there would be 2 bln additional population which would be needed to be

fed. where will this come from. Even in india, ifyou look each year we

are adding about 11 mio new mouths, which are ready to take a bite of a

roti, where is the production going to come from?

 

So eventually over next few years, we will move to bio tech food 100%,

the ground for which is being prepared right now.

 

9.     one more thing, can we have a section which

will talk about natural farming/organic farming etc- am sure ICAR would

hate it , but why not.

   A rapid summary of costs and subventions is correct. 1.     Last year with inputs from the Kisan Swaraj group I had done a small cost of cultivation balancing - none of the useless C2 C3 rubbish the Plan Comm likes and which the economists can't get rid of.It showed how impossible the MSPs were based on what cultivating families actually incurred. In contrast, some organic produce farmers who have maintained balancesheets have shown that removing the high-input costs (the chemical stuff the fertiliser, seed and biotech companies push) makes a 1 hectare plot an earning plot.2.     The Plan Comm / Min Agri / CACP / DARE cost of cultivation is a devious tool designed to ensure circuitous cash flow to the same high-input industry sectors.   

An article from Development: Greening the Economy, Volume 55, Number 1,

March 2012 would help.

Ravishankar casts his vote

 

liked the number 9

great stuff- like the look and feel of it, instead of grey scales, how

about giving the green shades- its agree, also can we link in the google

maps into it, so that, once the location of the user is locked,

immediately a map shows where he is located, just a thought.

 

 Kindly find the attached options for VKVK logo. Its a mix bag, some already

sent earlier and some new. To help the selection I have numbered them, as

well as put a little comment against each of them explaining what inspired

the visuals.

 The selection of the VKVK logo would be crucial as based on this the KVKnet

logo and the web page layouts need to be refined and fine tuned. So could

we have a quick vote on this? Also if you dont like any, let me know your

best choice and perhaps the direction in which you would like it.

 Rahul votes:

My three votes are for:

3 and 4 in file vkv02 and 4 in vkv01 - and preference order is the same.

 

 

Ravishankar casts his votes:

3 & 4

 

Koyel’s votes:

 

 vKVK 01- 4

 

vKVK 02- 2 and 5

 

agrotagger- 9 and 10

 Debaleena votes:

 

vKVK 01: 5 and 7

vKVK 02: 5

agrotagger: 5

 

Just an idea.........I felt very strongly about the words

VIRTUAL in vKVK. Could you please make up something in the logo to signify

the virtual networking element in vKVK?

from the ones you have conjured.

 

Amrita’s votes

vKVK 01- 6 & 7

vKVK 02- 3 & 6

agrotagger logos......votes for  3, 5 and 9.

 

 

Runa Sarkar casts the votes:

 

#9  followed by #6 for agrotagger

and

#3 followed by #4 of VKVK01.pdf for VKVK

 

 IIT,K’s votes:

 

   - VKVK01: 3 followed by 5 followed by 7

   - VKVK02: 6 followed by 4 followed by 5

   - Agrotagger: 8 followed by 7 followed by 10 (But with this logo we have

   a suggestion, as you have used a bar code style in logo no. 10 instead

   we can have a agrotagger *QR code* appended or embedded with

   "agrotagger")

 

Interfaces for KVKnet are also very nice. We will soon start working on

them.

 

The agropedia UI which you have send earlier (there were 3 of them-

all different style) which are not yet finalized.

Can that be also discussed here, so that we have a final face for

agropedia.net as well.

 

A couple of things:

 

1. Ravi, if you kindly mention which file have you selected the logos from

for VKVK (001 or 002?)

 

2. Meeta: Thanks for the suggestion on the QR code, will be done. As far as

agropedia interface is concerned, I will work on it as soon as I finish

KVK, VKVK and agrotagger. PLEASE DO NOT GO BY THE ONES THAT I HAD SENT YOU EARLIER.

 

 Kuntal votes:5 and 6 get my vote And 6 and 7 in VKVK02  Rahul laments the absence of TVP’s votes..........the father did not vote!So 3 ballots are yet to be dropped   ________________________________________________