News
Introduction to IDSS Project
ACI Agribusiness organizes introductory workshop on 'Empowering Farmers through Advanced Information' at Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) Auditorium, Farmgate, Dhaka with the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), and SNV. The workshop was aimed to introduce ACI's "Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS)" to key decision makers of DAE and other major government officials. ACI will provide information services, analyzing satellite data, to farmers.
The workshop was chaired by Dr. F H Ansarey, Managing Director & CEO, ACI Agribusiness. Mr. Md. Golam Maruf, Director General, DAE, was the chief guest and Mr. Chaitanya Kumar Das, Director, Field Services Wing, DAE and Mr. Jason Belanger, Country Director, SNV Bangladesh were special guests. Senior level officials from DAE, AIS, ACI, SNV and prominent agribusiness organizations participated in the workshop.
Mr. Shamim Murad, Team Leader, IDSS project initiated the workshop with a keynote explaining details of the IDSS platform, followed by speeches from distinguished guests, and a technical session with questions and answers.
With support from Netherlands Space Office, ACI Limited is developing IDSS to provide crop-specific and location-specific advisory services on crop suitability, better agronomic practices, pest and disease alert and weather forecast for farmers. By gathering, analyzing and disseminating crop-specific and location-specific information, IDSS services will empower farmers to solve key agricultural problems in a sustainable way. This will significantly enhance the productivity of farmers, leading to an overall improvement in farmers' decision making and the national food production of Bangladesh.
Mr. Md. Golam Maruf, Director General, DAE thanked ACI for undertaking the IDSS initiative to improve farmers' access to information using latest technology. He also emphasized the importance of private sector initiatives to improve the national agricultural productivity.
Dr. F H Ansarey highlighted the importance of increasing farmers productivity to ensure and maintain our nutritional and food security. Improving farm productivity alone is not enough, however; increasing farmers' income is equally important - both of which are specific targets of our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
He said that agricultural infopreneurs - people with critical information to serve rural farmers' needs - can play key roles in achieving the SDG targets, and IDSS will aid them in providing reliable and timely information to farmers.
IDSS is scheduled to release the beta version of its mobile app for farmers' use in September 2017, and the final version by January 2018.
