India is one of the world's largest food producers, creating the sustainability of its agricultural system of global significance. More than 67% of the Indian population still depend on agriculture or its allied sectors for their livelihood. There lies a requirement for the discussion on balancing or enriching the agriculture production in order to bring in food security for the growing population. Agriculture in recent years is facing great downfall due to uncertain monsoons, decline of soil fertility, population pressure, lack of support services, and so on. To overcome these, there is a need for communication such as dissemination of right information on right time to the farmers, which would help them towards advancing their knowledge on agriculture. The growth of active internet users over the past few years shall make this task easier. The chapter shall make an in-depth analysis on the need for the development of an agricultural social network and shall also present a prototype of the proposed system.
Top1. Introduction
In past few years, Online Social Networks (OSNs) have cause complete influence on the daily lives. Communicating with others and communicating knowledge with individuals, organizations, and groups is beneficial. It is gaining enormous popularity and expanding quickly across the world. A social relationship that is either assumed or established between people, families, houses, villages, neighborhoods, territories, and other social units is referred to as a “social network.” Connections or ties are the terms used to describe the connections between nodes in social networks. Connections or ties can be used to symbolize resource transfers, affiliation, authority, economic exchange, and technical diffusion. Connections might be undirected like Facebook or LinkedIn or directed like Twitter.
Since two-thirds of the inhabitants relies on agriculture for a living either explicitly or implicitly, it plays a very significant role inside the economic development of a country like India. Producing food, fiber, or other plant or animal commodities utilizing farming practices that preserve the natural world, including the ecosystem, public health, human cultures, and animal welfare, is known as sustainable agriculture. With such a type of farming, it is possible to grow nutritious food without endangering the potential of coming generations doing the same.
Similar to human and physical capital, social capital is crucial for a nation's economic progress.
Since a large portion of our country's population relies on agriculture, there seems to be a deficit in information and knowledge sharing that is needed to create a sustainable agricultural ecosystem across the entire nation. Through OSN, a nationwide connectivity has been made possible by the usability of mobile and smart phones. There are numerous ways for using the OSNs to accomplish the goal. It is not merely a time- and money-saving option. Through extraction of data from the OSNs and evaluating the data through numerous Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Data Mining (DM) techniques, the OSNs is being used as a teaching and knowledge tool for farmers as well as stakeholders. SNA aids in a deeper understanding and utilization of social capital. An effective and sustainable agricultural supply chain can indeed be built with the aid of ICT (Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and SNA.
1.1 Agriculture in India
The bulk of the population in India still relies on agriculture as their primary source of income.
During recent years, this economy's reliance on agriculture has suffered a severe decline. In order to achieve food security, the agricultural sector must make significant progress. During past few years, the agriculture industry has experienced declines beyond just productivity. Throughout 1950 to 2015, this industry has experienced a significant decline in compared to any of the other manufacturing and service sectors. Merely 16 to 17 percent of the GDP would be produced by the sector where fifty percent of the labour force is employed, compared to 20 and 55 percent for the other two. Reduced soil fertility, productivity strain, poor land ownership, socioeconomic issues like subpar advertising, and an inadequate infrastructure are only a couple of minor causes of decreased productivity. The Prime Minister of India renamed the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation into Department of Agriculture, Cooperation, and Farmers Welfare on Independence Day 2015 in response to a unique development aim that focused on the welfare and prosperity of farmers. This would encourage agriculture and its related industries to become not just ecologically sustainable but also socioeconomically sustainable in aspects of farmer social welfare. (Welfare, 2016).