Designing a user-centric mobile-based agro advisory system for sustainable development of smallholder farming systems in the eastern Himalayas, India

The Interactive Information Dissemination System (IIDS), a unique mobile-based agro advisory system (MBAS), was put under study in the Design Science Research approach with 2820 farmers in Garo Hills of Meghalaya, India. The study aims to design and develop a user-centric MBAS (m4AgriNEI) for augmenting sustainable smallholder farming systems in hilly regions. The outcomes are critically analysed in the form of learning and experiences to make some necessary modifications to the design. The deployment of the initiative helped to make the m4AgriNEI more user-centric to satisfy the information demand of the resource-poor, smallholder tribal farming communities of the eastern Himalayas. A majority of beneficiaries (70.32%) provided positive responses on advisories through the IIDS generated feedback system. The study suggests the future scaling of MBAS initiative by adding a better knowledge management system, a robust feedback system, a way to track farmer-to-farmer (F2F) communication, and a public-private-community partnership (PPCP) approach.