BENGALURU: The Coffee Board is thrilled that Dr Michael Kremer of Harvard University, who helped them turn around in Karnataka, has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics. He has got it along with Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee. Kremer’s project has made a positive impact on the lives of over 15,000 coffee farmers in the state in the last one year.
Precision Agriculture Development (PAD), co-founded by Kremer that helps transform agriculture by using latest technologies and research methods, has been working with the Coffee Board since June 2018. According to a Coffee Board official, the overall project — Coffee Krishi Taranga Service— launched about a year ago was designed by Kremer. His team had visited Karnataka a few times to assist the board in the implementation of the project.
The service was launched on a pilot basis in Hassan and Chikkamagaluru districts. The team regularly monitors its implementation. The service involves a weekly advisory on critical farm operations, updated daily market information through an automated push call via a simple missed call by registered coffee farmers to the call centre on 080-37685000 run by the Board.
PAD working with other govt agencies
Through this platform expert agronomists of CCRI, call back the farmer and give detailed expert advice on various specific farmer issues.PAD is working with several other government agencies in the country after its journey in India began as an academic experiment in Gujarat with cotton farmers in 2011 when Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister.
“Under his guidance and leadership, Team PAD has been working with the Coffee Board of India and the coffee ecosystem for more than one year now. Thanks to the stellar efforts of Michael, Shawn, Madhur, Niriksha and Team Coffee Board, we have been able to have a positive impact on the lives of 15,000 coffee farmers using a simple missed call service, free of cost to coffee farmers,” according to a statement issued by the Coffee Board.
“Even though it has run for just one year, a recent dipstick survey done shows significant impact on farmers income and it will be expanded to cover 50,000 farmers shortly,” the note from the board stated.s.