Internet project for farmers launched

A Pakistani web site focusing on the development of agriculture and rural communities has launched a mobile Internet information unit to promote the information highway among farmers, an executive of the site told IRIN on Friday. "We want to introduce the Internet to the farmers, to make them aware of how this can be used to their advantage," said Majid Rafiq, an executive of Pakissan.com from Lahore, the capital Punjab Province. Once conversant with the Internet and its possibilities, farmers can download the latest information on weather, seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, crop diseases and how to obtain loans. At present they rely on state-run radio broadcasts or rural community coordinators for this kind of information. The Internet can also be utilised for information exchanges between farming communities. This is the first time such a concept has been launched in Pakistan, a country where 70 percent of the population live in rural areas, but where Internet usage remains extremely low, especially outside cities. Rafiq said a van equipped with computers would be driven to villages where farmers would be shown how useful it could be to log on. After the demonstration, the farmers would be encouraged to continue using the Internet through nearby Internet cafes, he added. The science and technology minister, Ataur Rahman, a man driven to spread information technology and its application across the country, including the setting up of Internet cafes in villages, inaugurated the project on Thursday. Rafiq said the government had only provided "moral" help for the project so far, but he was expecting more "tangible" support both from the government and the private sector to enable the project to expand and to have additional vans.